Let me, briefly, using accounts from Knight Ridder Newspapers and the Associated Press, reconstruct the sad end of Chester Lee Miller for you, and then tell you why I am outraged afresh at the 9-month-old story.
Chester Lee Miller was 18 in September when he knocked on the door of Janice Goodman's home in Milton begging for a place to sleep.
He was, again, 18 years old.
He weighed 63 pounds.
He was 5 feet 3 inches tall.
He had been systematically starved by his mother and her boyfriend who, tired of caring for the young man who suffered from attention deficit disorder, placed him on a bus after giving him sandwiches on which - depending on which of their stories you believe - they had or hadn't poured an overdose of his medication.
They told him to go find his father, whom they hadn't notified before sending Miller away from their, and allegedly his, home in Hazleton, Pa.
He had lived with his father until a year earlier but had been sent to live with his mother and her boyfriend, Paul Hoffman.
Before he was put on the bus by his mother and stepfather, according to police, he was beaten, confined to his room and wasn't allowed to eat anything except table scraps.
He was hospitalized.
He gained weight until he weighed 100 pounds a few days later, although a pathologist thought he might have gained the weight because his kidneys were not functioning properly, and he couldn't excrete urine.
His stomach ruptured, causing an infection to spread through his body. He died three days after asking a stranger, "Are you my new mommy?"
His mother, Lyda Miller, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the case, promising to testify against her former boyfriend, charged with third-degree murder and who she said beat and intimidated her as well as beat and starved her son. He is still awaiting trial.
There is some doubt about whether her boyfriend, Paul Hoffman, actually tried to poison Chester Miller with an overdose of the medication he was supposed to be taking for his attention deficit disorder, or whether he just lied about it, as he now says.
Either way, this woman sent her son off on a bus trip from Pennsylvania to Florida with what she thought were poisoned sandwiches but decided he was okay after he called from Washington and said he had been throwing up and felt better.
His mother spent 10 months behind bars and then, after entering her guilty plea to involuntary manslaughter and promising to testify against her boyfriend, was released last week.
You still with me?
Here's the thing.
We all know that there is no such thing as a bad person. Just misunderstood ones, right?
Everyone charged with a crime, especially if the criminal has just died, is described glowingly by family and friends as being at some milestone on the road to rehabilitation and righteousness.
He or she has always just started getting his or her life together or just turned his or her life around.
Mrs. Miller, 40, will have to wear an electronic monitor while she serves the rest of her one- to two-year sentence on house arrest for putting her dying son on a bus with what she thought were poisoned sandwiches, but she can petition for parole in about three months.
Then she can petition for custody of her other two children, who have been in foster care since her arrest and who were 12 and 13 when she was arrested.
"She's trying to get her life back together and trying to get her family back together," her lawyer said.
