Born that way?

Here I am, because I need to distract myself.  I’m at work….it’s a good thing everyone has left.  I decided to use the time I had here alone to do some reading.  I stupidly bought a true-crime book, Pure Murder.  I’ve been sitting here crying…make that sobbing…for the last half hour….I’m still crying.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so horrified and disgusted in my life.

In 1993 in Houston, TX, two teenage girls were hurrying home so they wouldn’t miss their curfew.  One was 14, the other was 16.  They were running behind, so they decided to cut through a park.  They came across a group of six boys who had been drinking all evening and looking for a fight.  What those six boys put those girls through is undescribable.  For at least an hour they were abused in every way imaginable, and after the boys had had their fun, they strangled and stomped them to death so they couldn’t go to the police.  Then four of them went to one of the boys’ homes and sat and laughed….LAUGHED!….and bragged to the boy’s brother and wife about what they’d done. 

Two other boys, twin brothers, were with the six that night, but had left mere minutes before the "fun" began.  They saw their friends grab the girls and drag them away, heard the girls screaming for help, and did….nothing.  They went home. 

All of the boys grew up somewhat poor, none of them got very far in school, and all of them had discipline problems.  None of them were abused.  They all had families that loved them. 

I just don’t get it.  What could make someone treat another human being that way?  Are some people just born bad, or broken?  I wish I’d never picked up this book.  I literally can’t stop crying.  My heart aches for what those girls went through, and for their families.