Terrible 1997 Headlines

     When I think of the 90s, I think of this booming technicolor world of unflattering fashion and burgeoning technology. The economy was great, the TV and movies were awesome, the teen grunge scene was huge, and boy bands were cropping up like poison ivy. All my images of the 90s are happy, positive, stable. But that's just the picture that's been painted for me by the media and by my parents' recollections.
     Today I was reading this People Magazine 1997 Yearbook special edition thing, and there was a section on headlines of the year, and they were SO DISTURBING!!! Allow me to share with you some of the most horrifying events of the 1990s:

Headline: Two Futures on Hold: Two teens await trial on charges of murdering their newborn
     "...Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson are simply a couple of kids who got into trouble, then made a tragic mistake. That "mistake" involved the death of their newborn son and the depositing of his body in a dumpster outside a Delaware motel in November 1996...

Here's a picture of the couple. 

     Peterson and Grossberg might well have escaped detection had Grossberg not collapsed in her University of Delaware dorm in Newark. After paramedics took her to Christiana Hospital, doctors determined that she had given birth to a baby, possibly within the last 12 hours. Only after doctors told Grossberg that the placenta had not yet been expelled from her body did she admit she'd had a baby. Eventually, a police dog found the dead newborn in a gray plastic bag. After an autopsy showed that the infant had been born healthy and had then died as the result of multiple skull fractures and also having been shaken, prosecutors announced that they would be seeking the death penalty...
     As [Grossberg and Peterson await their trial] both have a $300,000 bail hanging over their heads--and black electronic monitoring bands around their ankles."

Let's recap: This teenage couple get pregnant, and because they were so scared to tell their parents, they decided to give birth to the baby in some shoddy motel, kill the baby immediately, and shove it in a dumpster. Of course, they were too stupid to think about the placenta, so the girl collapses because it's still inside her. Still, she tries to claim she never had a child, until the doctors prove that she did. !!!!!! My curiosity got the better of me, so I googled to see what the verdict of the trial was: Turns out Brian pled guilty and went to jail for life, and Amy got a plea bargain and went to jail for 2 years. 


Headline: A Dance Macabre: Charged with killing her baby at the prom, Melissa Drexler faces an uncertain future

Here she is at prom

     "...Drexler managed, beneath baggy, loose fitting clothes, to conceal that she was pregnant. No one knew--not her classmates, not her parents, not even her boyfriend...
     The evening of the prom, Drexler... retreated to the rest room, purportedly to freshen up. She remained there for more than a half hour, eventually moving from one stall to another...a friend who had waited outside checked on her, at one point noticing blood dripping to the floor and a plastic bag with something in it. Drexler assured Brewer that she was simply having a heavy period. But soon after Drexler dabbed on some makeup, zipped her dress and returned to the prom, a maintenance worker found a blood-streaked mess in the stalls and a sanitary-napkin dispenser wrenched from the bathroom wall. (Drexler had apparently used its jagged edge to cut the umbilical cord.) Perplexed by a heavy trash bag that had been tied shut, the cleaner had a coworker carry it outside, where they opened it to discover the body of a...baby boy. Confronted on the dance floor by two teachers, Drexler first denied giving birth, then admitted it and was sent by ambulence to a nearby hospital where she delivered the placenta and the baby was declared dead...

And here she is walking into her trial. 

     The defense is expected to argue either that Drexler, now 19, was suffering a psychological disorder and was acting while in denial of the pregnancy and delivery, or the baby was not alive at birth. Prosecutors have made their position clear: The baby died from manual strangulation and asphyxiation."

Say what???: So this girl hides her pregnancy for 9 fricken' months, and then, just her luck, she goes into labor at her prom and gives birth quietly and hastily in the bathroom with very little suspicion until later on in the night!!! The caption under the picture from this headline says "After giving birth, Drexler requested a Metallica song, then hit the dance floor with [her boyfriend]." What the heck! So she shoves her child in the bathroom trash can, and then immediately goes back out and starts dancing again like nothing even happened! How is that even possible??? Giving birth is a messy, painful, physically fatiguing event! I don't understand! And I also don't understand how being pregnant can be such a scary thing to admit that you'd rather KILL YOUR NEWBORN CHILD than tell your parents!!!! Turns out she was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but got out early on parole after 37 months. 

Headline: Heaven Couldn't Wait: Propelled by visions of a UFO, 39 cultists kill themselves

     "...Though some of those who joined Heaven's Gate [cult] had obvious emotional problems, most of the [members] seemed disarmingly ordinary. They were largely businessmen, mothers and students...Leading their quest was Marshall Herff Applewhite...Applewhite was strict about enforcing group discipline. Members had to sign out to get their driver's licenses and car keys before they could leave the compound; there was a seating chart for members when they watched TV; and for a while there was 'tomb time' during which members could not speak to each other for days on end. Occasionally tuning forks would be taped to the cultists heads in an effort to dispel human thoughts...While Applewhite died alone in the master bedroom, the rest perished in three groups, by first swallowing phenobarbital mixed with apple sauce or pudding, then vodka, then placing plastic bags over their heads--all in the blissful belief a spaceship was waiting to carry away their spirits."

Here are some of the members, post-suicide.

Some captions from pictures: "Applewhite, who fought his own homosexuality, submitted to surgical castration, as did seven other sect members" and "Uniformly clad in black pants, flowing black shirts and brand-new black Nike sneakers, all but the last two members of the cult to die were covered by purple shrouds."

Ummmmm: How was there not even a single cult member that looked around at all these wackos killing themselves and went "Maybe I don't want to do this after all..."??? And what a surprise to all those cult members when there WAS NO FRICKEN SPACESHIP WAITING FOR THEM AFTER ALL!!! This is just so freaking creepy to me! How could 39 people just kill themselves under the influence of one man??? Normal people, mothers and fathers! Leaving their families to go meet the aliens that would transport them out of the human world! What?!?!? It gives me a sick feeling in my stomach, literally!

Sheesh, humanity is so screwed up! Can I just say thank you to everyone who's NOT in a cult, and everyone who opted to tell their parents they were pregnant, even if it was the scariest thing you ever did. Because seriously, these stories are TERRIBLE!

                 -VaughnDL