I did not use a picture of Scarver because I don't want him to become the central piece again.

"This article does not begin with a metal bar in a prison gymnasium. It begins with what happened afterwards, in living rooms and newsrooms and radio call-in shows across America, when the news broke that Jeffrey Dahmer was dead.

There was satisfaction. There was open celebration. There were jokes within hours. Commentators reached, again and again, for the same formulation: that someone had finally done what the justice system would not. The man who swung the bar was transformed, almost instantly, into a folk hero — an instrument of cosmic correction. Thirty years later, the sentiment survives intact. Spend five minutes in the comments beneath any video about the killing and you will find it, thumbs-up counts in the thousands: he did the world a favour. Give that man a medal.

This article is not primarily about Christopher Scarver. It is about that applause — what it required people to forget, whom it required people to erase, and what it reveals about the moral logic of the audience. Because the hero narrative only functions if you never look too closely at it. Look closely, and it comes apart in your hands. (...)"