Now, it seems that some of the most notorious modern-day murderers and rapists will chronicle their lives for the world to see. Some seem to journal their thoughts as a cry for help, while others do so solely for narcissistic reasons. Others write for no other reason besides the fact that it is trendy. Whatever the reason, their words, feelings, thoughts and opinions are available for the world to see, and likely will be for some time.

John Dallas Lockhart, a former lawyer whose computer contained photographic evidence of his raping a 3-month-old girl, evaded police for nearly a year before getting caught in June. Lockhart wrote on his own blogs about a variety of topics including his family life, his work, his extravagant sexual lifestyle as a swinger and, beyond all of this, his deepest and darkest thoughts on life.

Below are two excerpts from his first journal, Days in the Life… (Lockhart’s second journal, created after his separation from his wife, Laurie, is called Ramblings of an Inverted Mind).

The Great and Secret Show @ 2004-01-31 11:50:00
”We all have our public faces. The one (or ones) we put on for the world at large. Some of us have many public faces – one for family, one for neighbors, one for close friends. I believe in most cases none of these faces are “false” or “fake”; we simply all make choices about the level of personal detail we choose to reveal in various situations. Being openly who you are is a wonderful thing, but does the lady you chat with in line at the bank really need to know you think she’d look hot with a giant cock gag shoved in her mouth, hanging upside down in your basement with some low level electrical current running through her nipples? Probably not.

This journal has been one of those faces for me. While it has perhaps been revealing to someone who’s paying close attention, it has nonetheless been a highly selective exercise. LiveJournal is not typically therapy for me, or venting – it’s simply writing, and I’m well aware of my audience when I post. It’s truth, but only selected snippets of it…things I think will be an interesting or funny read. Through them you all see a part of my life, our lives, but certainly not the broad spectrum.

Of course, there is also a private face – the ‘you’ known only to you (if you take the time to reflect) or, if you’re both lucky and brave, to one or a few special others. This is the Great and Secret Show – theatre with an endless run, leastways ’til death do you part. This part of you, at least this part of me, doesn’t see the light of day very often. Though I’m wildly open about a lot of things, there are wide trampling swathes of me that are simply closed…permanently under construction…inaccessible to damn near everyone, including me sometimes.

But not today. The following is as close as most of you will ever come to a seat for my secret show. You’ve been warned….” (Read More)

Mess with a Three Year Old – It’s Fun and It’s Easy @ 2003-12-14 18:36:00
“I was laying on the couch a little while ago and for some odd reason Tristan asked me if he could take my socks off. I said sure, and he started pulling on the toe of my left sock. Pull as he might, he couldn’t get it off. I told him that was because I put special glue on the bottom of my foot to make sure my socks didn’t fall off, and if he wanted to get the sock off he’d have to lick the bottom of my foot to soften up the glue. Being the trusting soul that he is, he went right for it…he even got a couple of fuzzy licks in before I got my foot out of the way. Is it mean to take pleasure in goofing with your own child like that?? lol

Laurie thought it was pretty funny too, but she couldn’t decide if it was funnier than earlier when, after pretending Tristan was Santa for a while and I was a reindeer, Tristan asked me to cut up a piece of pizza he was eating with my reindeer horns. I went into the kitchen and got a knife and fork, then came back in holding them like antlers on the top of my head. I bent over and took a shot at cutting up his pizza that way, but mostly I just scraped some of the toppings onto the floor. Laurie still laughed so hard she peed.

I think I need to get a hobby..lol”

In hindsight, the first excerpt provides us with an idea of Lockhart’s humanity—something I feel that everyone has, no matter how deep within themselves they keep it. The second excerpt, while a bit odd-sounding, comes off as reasonably harmless fun until we take into consideration the criminal charges Lockhart faces today. With those charges in mind, this quote transforms from implying “strangeness” to a certain level of “sickness.” Even still, one can see his human side.

Just what happened in Lockhart’s life, sending him down the spiral of increasing sexual deviancy? What is it that made it all right, in his mind, for him to commit the atrocious crime of raping an infant? Some people might be quick to say that it is because he is not a human. Perhaps they are right. I am no psychoanalyst, and for all we know, Lockhart’s last shred of humanity left him the day he gained sexual pleasure from a defenseless child.

The inspiration for this entry actually comes from our next blogger, Joseph Edward Duncan III. Duncan, as you might recall, has made headlines this past week for allegedly abducting Dylan and Shasta Groene, ages 9 and 8 respectively. According to the most recent headlines. Ducan is alleged to have raped both children, and to have possibly killed the young boy.

Duncan’s own blog, Blogging the Fifth Nail, contains an even deeper look into his psyche than we get initially from Lockhart’s journals.

Here are a few exceprts:

Still Confused @ 2005-05-13 17:43:00
“My blog entries lately are erratic and full of a lot of B.S., for that I apologize. I am just trying to put down what is in my head, regardless. As far as ‘taking people with me’ well, I don’t know if that is right or wrong. In fact, I don’t know much any more what right and wrong even is. My view is either everything is right (in some regard) or everything is wrong (in some other regard). The question (one I am struggling with at this point) is, “Does it matter?”
Does anything matter? My mother is crying right now, because her son is in trouble again. She tried to raise a good son, and she knows her son has a good heart, so why does he do these things? She is probably more hurt and confused than me. Does it matter? It hurts me to know these things, but DOES IT MATTER???
A hundred years from now, all my mothers pain will be forgotten, and other mothers will cry for there sons. A million years from now there probably won’t be any mothers (at least not like we know).

…

I wish I could be more honest about my feelings, but those demons made sure I’d never be able to do that. I might not know if it matters, but just in case, I am working on an encrypted journal that is hundreds of times more frank than this blog could ever be (that’s why I keep it encrypted). I figure in 30 years or more we will have the technology to easily crack the encryption (currently very un-crackable, PGP) and then the world will know who I really was, and what I really did, and what I really thought. Also, maybe then they will understand that despite my actions, I’m not a bad person, I just have a disease contracted from society, and it hurts a lot.
I hope to complete this journal before I die (soon) or turn myself in (I still might do that, I think it is the right thing, but of course, I’m not sure).
Speak of being sure; I wish I could be sure about my thoughts. But right now the only thing I’m sure about is that I’m sure about nothing. It is not a good position to be in considering my circumstances (being a felony fugitive and all).”

The Demons Have Taken Over @ 2005-05-11 21:17:00
“Thanks for the comments. As far as letting God take care of the Demons, too late. They’ve locked up the ‘Happy Joe’ person in the same dungeon that ‘Happy Joe’ kept them in for so many years. Now they are loose and I am very afraid. From now on I may refer to ‘Happy Joe’ as ‘Jet’ (me) and the demons as ‘The Bogeyman.’ If you are familiar with me or even my fifthnail website then you will understand the names (see www.fifthnail.com).
I have been asking God to help defeat the demons. In fact, last night I was on my knees begging him, crying out loud to him, to help me. He didn’t answer, again. The problem is I am loosing my religion. I don’t accept anything at face value, not even my own thoughts. So when I start having religious convictions I question the source. And in my current situation I figure I am under a lot of stress, and there are perfectly natural human mechanisms that account for all religious experiences. The demons (if that’s what they/it are/is–I use the term for mere convenience) have convinced me that I should at least question my religious beliefs, (this makes sense, otherwise I would believe anything) and that is how they got the key to the dungeon, and trapped me inside.
To be more specific, I am scared, alone, and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society. My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die. As for the ‘Happy Joe’ (Jet), well he was just a dream. The bogeyman was alive and happy long before Happy Joe.
I was in prison for over 18 years, since the age of 17. As an adult all I knew was the oppression of incarceration. All those years I dreamed of getting out…And getting even. Instead, I got out and I got even, but did not get caught. So, I got even again, and again did not get caught. So, I figured, well, I got even twice (actually more, but that’s here nor there), even if I’m the only one who knows, so now what? Well that was when the ‘Happy Joe’ dream started. I met a bunch of really great people, the kind of people I didn’t even know existed, but here they were, bunches of them, my neighbors, my landlords, my professors, my coworkers, and they were all good people, who were willing to give me a chance despite my past. They were willing to accept me and be my friend, something that was new for me, having been betrayed by many “friends” and even my own family.
So, I tried to make it work. But the problem was those demons. The ones who ‘got even’ for me. They kept reminding me that if my new “friends” knew about them (and what they, I, had done to even), then so much for their friendship. So, “Happy Joe” was just dreaming, or pretending to be happy.

These excerpts are chilling, to say the least. The internet is full of “inverted minds,” as Lockhart would call them, but this statement is not meant to bring about any level of fear. “Inverted minds” can exist anywhere and everywhere—they can reside within our bankers, our lawyers, our doctors, our grocery clerks and even within ourselves.

Needless to say, it is no wonder that they exist on the internet as well. If there ever were a melting pot, it is the World Wide Web. Goths, furries, punks, diabetics, good samaritans, bad samaritans, women, men, bisexuals, transsexuals, asexuals, metrosexuals—they all have their own communities, and yet if one looks hard enough, he will find that members of these groups also intermingle.

There are many other “inverted minds” with blogs. Two others who come to mind are Rochelle Waterman, who is new in prison for the murder of her mother, and Jeff Weise, who gained posthumous fame after killing nine people and then himself in Red Lake, Minn.

There is far less to be learned on Waterman’s and Weise’s journals. Whereas Weise barely wrote any entries in his, some of Waterman’s entries have now been blocked from public view.