- cross-posted to:
- news
- cross-posted to:
- news
The victim, Sam Nordquist, a 24-year-old transgender man originally from Minnesota, was reported missing on Feb. 9. Police said he arrived in New York in September and had lost contact with loved ones.
Major Kevin Sucher, commander of the state police troop that includes the Finger Lakes region, said the facts and circumstances of the case were “beyond depraved” and “by far the worst” homicide investigation the office has ever been part of.
“No human being should have to endure what Sam endured,” he said, during televised news conference. Police did not share many details of the case, noting it remained under active investigation.
You must log in or register to comment.
This is a local story for me. Only one media outlet mentioned that he was trans. This was a hate crime.
I’ve been following this story for a bit (am trans). Can confirm, every news outlet has been burying the lede to make it seem like it wasn’t targeted.
This is fucking horrific, and more of this is what is coming.
This is why they pushed this issue so hard. They want people to feel no remorse at torturing and killing someone who was doing nothing that materially affected their lives. Sam Nordquist existing as who he was did not hurt these people.
We’re in for dark times, friends.
Say his name: Sam Nordquist. Do not forget him.
While I don’t disagree let’s not forget that hate crimes are unfortunately not unheard of regardless as to who is running the country.
You’re not wrong, but someone who is activity taking away the rights of LGBTQIA+, migrants, women, and more is very much encouraging hate crimes and that will add to them.
I agree but I don’t want to encourage people preemptively stressing out too much to the point that they either make bad decisions or completely burn out. We can’t lose it every time something bad happens that we have no control over.
It’s really important that we take care of ourselves right now and choose our emotional battles. This situation is incredibly heartbreaking and enraging but we have to keep things in perspective and keep a level head in this crucial time.
The powers that be are hoping we will burn out and/or make poor decisions based on fear. They are hoping that people with no gun experience will rashly buy one and make mistakes with it. They’re hoping we stress out to the point we can’t function. We have to be careful.
Just a heads up, the killer is literally a convicted pedophile who raped a 7-year old and a 9-year old
What do you mean by the killer? 5 people have been charged for his death including someone convicted of selling pornography to a minor (and 4th degree grand larceny) and Sam’s online girlfriend who he was visiting.
I’m really only bringing this up because the way I interpreted your comment is that it’s putting Goodwin is more responsible for Sam’s death. If the accusations I’ve seen are true, probably none of them deserve to be free ever again imo.
If all you’re doing is pointing out how big of a piece of shit Goodwin is, I agree entirely and would just like to add 2 more giant pieces of shit and I’d imagine if 3 or Out of the 5 are that shitty I’m skeptical at best of the other 2
If there is some reason to point more of the blame at 1 individual I’d be interested to hear it
Sorry I didn’t say “ringleader”
Entire news story aside, does the picture look a little AI generated? The background is pretty weird and the necklace kinda ends.
After doing a little search, I found this https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/slain-transgender-man-sam-nordquist-was-tortured-for-weeks-police-say-5-people-arrested/ar-AA1z8gCb
It’s the same image but pretty blurry. It looks like AP News used some AI upscaling or deblurring to filter it into something resembling a higher res picture.
Thanks! That explains it! Here’s the image you linked for people who don’t want to visit MSN
I really dislike it when people slather AI upscalers onto images for no reason. Very rarely does it improve the perceived quality of the image, most of the time it just changes your reaction from “wow, this is a low-res photo” to “wow, someone tried upscaling this low-res photo”. Here it somehow made the image even worse
Thanks for the inline image! I agree, AI upscalers are iffy at best and really should not be used for this kind of reporting.
Yeah, what’s up with that? At first I thought it was a weird camera/filter, but the more I look the worse it gets. What are those… powerlines? in the background on the right? Why are they next to a building/tree hybrid? What is the flamingo looking thing behind him? What logo is on his cap? Am I paranoid!?
Regardless what happens we can put up a fight. Arm yourselves. Show them what happens when they pick a fight with us.
Get proper training along with the armament. Arming yourself only goes so far if your skills are so weak that you are disarmed and the weapon is turned against you. In that situation, having the arms makes you more vulnerable since you don’t know how to properly use them.
In most situations being armed makes you more vulnerable.
Also do not get one if you have ever thought of harming yourself.
Please look into other ways to arm/protect yourself if possible.
Great advice, I’m in this group. I have had thoughts of self-harm at points in my life, and as such I have preferred to not have weapons.
I instead purchased a cop-style flashlight that is bright enough to make it difficult for someone to see me clearly if I am pointing it directly at them, even from a distance.
So that’s my personal suggestion here. High powered flashlight. If I recall correctly I got the idea from Joe Pera Talks With You in an episode where his doomsday prepper girlfriend is discussing self-protection skills. I always liked that her character was a total opposite spin on the usual doomsday prepper, she was actually pretty smart about things and she had a tragic backstory as to why she was so sure she needed to prep.
Don’t rely on a flashlight for self defense, in lieu of a firearm.
Pepper gel. That’s what you need/want.
Tortured how?
You might wonder why people are down voting, so I’ll clarify. Usually horrific details about sensitive topics are only shared with the police, courts, and family initially. They will come out at trial eventually. The primary reason is to not force it in the face of survivors as well as to protect the dignity of the deceased.
Appreciate the clarification. My curiosity certainly isn’t more important than surviving loved ones. Theirs no acceptable torture obviously, I was trying to figure out, at least generally, the context to go with the cops statement. I can’t imagine the kinds of things a homicide detective sees throughout their career, not really anyway. I’m guessing my question probably came off insensitive etc. I just spoke my curiosity after reading the article and searching online a bit to find an answer and came back and asked without thinking about it.
Local news staffer here, usually we’re not given any of the circumstances in case like this, but even if we find out the “how” we don’t report it. It’s the same with suicides and murder/suicides… if we have to (celebrity, politicians, person’s of note) we report that it happened once and that’s it.
It is definitely to shield victims and families but it’s also to prevent copycats.
I was curious about the details as well. Don’t feel bad
This is why I support the death penalty. It should almost never be used, but for cases as extreme as this. The evidence also has to be rock-solid.
Unfortunately, it’s been used far too liberally and on a racial basis in the past, so a lot of people are against it.
I simply don’t think some criminals deserve to live out the rest of their lives, in a maximum security prison or otherwise.
The death penalty does not work. Not as a deterrent, not as closure for the families, not even to reduce costs. Even if you think there are acts so vile that someone forfeits their right to life, there are many reasons against the death penalty. For example, what does rock-solid evidence mean? There have been cases with good evidence, multiple witnessed and a full confession, that later turned out to be wrong convictions. What percentage of innocents among the convicted is acceptable?
Here’s a great video by Shaun that goes through the arguments better than I could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L30_hfuZoQ8
I’m not hugely opinionated either way, but you say it doesn’t work as a deterrent. However, that person can never commit another terrible crime again. So it’s definitely doing something.
If they get life without parole they can’t, either. But if in ten years you figure out they were actually innocent, you can release an inmate. You can’t unkill an executee
The deterrent argument usually goes “people are more afraid of dying than of getting imprisoned, so they’ll not commit that crime”. This probably doesn’t work. Because even if the basic premise was true (it likely isn’t), the consequences are bad anyways. You need to draw the line somewhere. Let’s say murder gets you the death penalty, and so does rape. Now a rapist has nothing to lose, might as well kill the victim to hide the evidence.
I don’t want it as a deterrent and I’m very aware there have been cases where convictions have turned out to be false. Obviously, the standards for evidence need to be very high. But some people do not deserve to live. And I’m not so certain about it not bringing some degree of closure to families; it certainly isn’t an antidote to grief and loss, but knowing the person who tortured and killed your loved one gets to keep living out their own life, even if behind bars can certainly haunt you as an injustice.
I’m aware of all the arguments against it, and I’ve changed my mind about this issue a couple times. It’s not something I take lightly at all. Still, I think in exceptionally vile and clear cases, it should be allowed.
As you said, the standard for evidence needs to be very high. That means long and protracted trials, multiple rounds of appeals, etc. You’re condemning the loved ones to years upon years of proceedings, having to face the perpetrator again and again. This is not a gut feeling, there’s empirical studies about this.
Reduce that time and barrier of proof, more innocents die. What percentage is acceptable?
There is no rational reason to use the death penalty over life without parole. The only reason is the base, if very understandable, instinct to have people that did unspeakable things suffer. But if suffering is the point, why stop at executions? Why not first torture them for what they did?
I firmly believe that the carceral system should serve to rehabilitate those that can be rehabilitated, and for the worst offenders, isolate and protect victims, their families and wider society from them. Putting punishment over the well-being of victims and co-victims, and over the risk to innocents, is not something we should want from a civilized society.
You neglected to answer what would be an acceptable number of innocent people to be put to death on bad evidence.
For me I would rather have guilty people walking free than innocent people in jail or on death row.
No number of innocent people incarcerated on bad evidence is acceptable, much less executed. That’s why I’m saying the standard of evidence would need to be extremely high. Your argument is that there would inevitably be people executed who were innocent, but I don’t believe that needs to be the case. Standards could be such that having the crime on video is required or direct witnessing from multiple unimpeachable sources.
Is the standard of evidence and possibility of false convictions really your main concern here or do you just not think the State should ever execute people on moral grounds? Because I believe I’ve provided an acceptable answer to the former argument; if your issue is actually the latter then I believe we simply have a difference in ethical beliefs.
I don’t believe we could ever get to a point where the standard of evidence is so high that it removes all possibility of killing an innocent person.
That isn’t my only objection. I firmly believe that punishment as a deterrent for crime doesn’t work and it’s just used to satiate people’s desire for vengeance. You only have to look at recidivism rates to see that it’s pot luck whether someone will reoffend or not. For most crimes we should have a rehabilitation approach, if the aim is to lower the number of victims of crime and not just revenge.
For the most heinous of crimes. Life in jail is my preferred approach. As perhaps we can learn more from those individuals to try and spot signs earlier and potentially help have less victims in the future.
I want to stress that my goal would be to lower the number of victims of crime, by whatever means is best to do this. Punishment is just to satisfy the victims or general population rather than to lower the number of potential future victims.
I’d be willing to allow public hangings again for crimes such as this.
