BENTONVILLE — Happily, Benton County is not a hotbed of violent crime.
Though we get the occasional murder around here - we had one just last month - it's relatively rare, and always has been in this county.
For that reason, what happened 10 years ago this Saturday is still astonishing to us. If you were here then, you probably remember.
It was early that morning that Rogers police were called to an apartment on West Sunset Drive. There they found Jesse Dirkhising, a 13-year-old boy from Prairie Grove, on the floor in the middle of a room next to a mattress. His mouth was blue, his right hand was wrapped with duct tape, and he was unresponsive. He would be pronounced dead at St. Mary's Hospital less than an hour later.
Later we learned the horrendous details of the case. Jesse had been bound and gagged with his own underwear, drugged and repeatedly raped with various objects. An autopsy determined that positional asphyxiation, suffocation and acute amitriptyline intoxication had contributed to his death.
The culprits, 22-year-old Joshua Brown and 38-year-old Davis Don Carpenter, are now in prison on convictions of rape and murder.
But Sept. 26, 1999, was memorable for another reason. Hours after Jesse's death, Bentonville police were called to Southwest Fourth Street, where 37-yearold Michael Trammell had been shot with a crossbow. He died a short time later at the hospital.
The shooter in the case was Trammell's 15-year-old son, Justin Wade Trammell, who was apprehended later that day near Carthage, Mo.
Trammell pleaded guilty and was sentenced as a juvenile.
When his case came up for review right before his 18th birthday, Benton County Circuit Judge Jay Finch granted the boy a golden opportunity to get his life back together. Despite prosecutors' protests, Finch released Trammell from custody in October 2002 and put him on three years of probation.
"Please reward our trust with an exemplary life," Finch told Trammell before letting him go.
Unfortunately, Trammell's life since then has been less than exemplary.
In 2004 he was returned to the custody of the Division of Youth Services for violating probation after being arrested outside a Fayetteville nightclub for having a fake ID and for public intoxica tion. He also landed in trouble for failing to pay child support.
On his 21st birthday - July 4, 2005 - he was released from the legal system.
In January 2007, Trammellwas pulled over by a Washington County Sheriff's Office deputy and given a citation for reckless driving. His passenger, Mitchell Johnson - one of the shooters in the 1998 Jonesboro school murders, and someone Trammell met while the two were locked up together - was charged with possession of marijuana and carrying a gun.
That same month Trammell was accused - though later acquitted by a jury - of threatening to kill the mother of his son. Trammell's latest problem is a 2008 arrest for possession of marijuana plants, for which he is awaiting trial.
We keep waiting for Trammell to get his life on track. The justice system has handed him one chance after another, but each additional chance has led to more disappointing choices.
Most of us, at some point in our lives, have been tempted to walk on the wrong side of the law, but Trammell seems attracted to it more than others.
On this, the 10-year anniversary of the murder of his father, if he hasn't done so already, Trammell should resolve to keep his name out of the headlines. It would be a good first step toward a better life.
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One murder in Benton County is unusual. Two murder cases on the same day is downright odd.
But we remember Sept. 26 not just for the fact that two local residents were killed. If there is such a thing as an "ordinary" murder story, the Dirkhis ing and Trammell murders were far from it.
The Jesse Dirkhising story attracted media from all over.
Jesse died two weeks before the first anniversary of the murder of Matthew Shepard - a 21-year-old Wyoming man who was tortured and murdered, supposedly because he was gay. Some conservatives questioned why Jesse's murder was not initially covered as intensely as Shepard's, the suspicion being that the mainstream media were covering up the case because Jesse's murderers were homosexuals.
As a measure of how big Jesse's case became, consider that you can find a 2,000-word entry on Wikipedia all about it.
Trammell's case did not attract as much fascination, but it was unusual nonetheless. In killing his father, he was unofficially tagged as the Crossbow Killer. His association with Johnson has added to the intrigue of Trammell's story - though we're fairly certain the friendship has not helped him.
We will not soon forget Sept.
26, 1999. You might never hear a more shocking pair of stories emerge from our backyard on the same day. At least we can hope as much.
Opinion, Pages 6 on 09/25/2009