Man kills three, self, at gym

Heidi Overmier, 46, of Carnegie, PA.
Elizabeth Gannon, 49, of Pittsburgh, PA.
Jody Billingsley, 38, of Mount Lebanon, PA.

How many times have we seen variations on this headline -- "Man Kills [insert number], Self at [insert location]?"

The only thing different about this story is that the man killed random women instead of family members.

Heidi Overmier, 46, of Carnegie, PA.
Elizabeth Gannon, 49, of Pittsburgh, PA.
Jody Billingsley, 38, of Mount Lebanon, PA.

These women died because they went to work out at a fitness center at the same time a man decided some women had to die to pay for his injured ego.

A man who feels he has been rejected by women deals with the problem by killing women. And after he kills as many as he can, the big brave gunman kills himself.

Let's compare that with the news story that the 24-hour-a-day news cycle had so much fun with just yesterday-- the story of the four women [one of which was his wife] who repaid an unfaithful man by gluing his penis to his stomach.

Stupid and illegal of course, and terribly painful for the guy no doubt, but not lethal.

News reports says the women face punishment, perhaps six years in prison, and at least one said in a Monday news report that "the story has gotten twisted and she's embarrassed. 'I am disturbed. I am upset. I am having a hard time handling life; an emotional wreck,' Wendy Sewell, 43, of Kaukauna, said in a telephone interview from her home. 'I am ashamed.'

The women did a stupid criminal thing, and they will most likely spend time in prison because of it. They are reaping the consequences of their actions.

George Sodini, on the other hand, joined the hundreds of men each year who kill a woman or women and then kill themselves.

The Associated Press reported that George Sodini apparently kept a "Web page in which he wrote about years of rejection by women and an earlier plan for violence at the gym in which he said he 'chickened out.'

"He also complained of not having a girlfriend since 1984, not having a date since May 2008 and not having sex for 19 years. 'Women just don't like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one,' he wrote."

It appears from news reports about his blog that he had been planning the killings for nine months. The New York Times reported that he recorded his frustrations in his online dairy:

“I actually look good,' Mr. Sodini wrote in an entry dated Dec. 29, 2008. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne — yet 30 million women rejected me — over an 18 or 25-year period. That is how I see it. Thirty million is my rough guesstimate of how many desirable single women there are."

Get that? All 30 million of the "desirable single women" in the world rejected him. Can you say meglomania?

The Times reports that he wrote, “A man needs a woman for confidence. He gets a boost on the job, career, with other men, and everywhere else when he knows inside he has someone to spend the night with and who is also a friend.”

He wanted a woman for confidence, to get a boost with other men. The phrase "who is also a friend" is an afterthought.

This man, for whatever reason, believed that "Women just don't like me." So the problem had to be with women, not with him, right? The lack of self-examination seems pretty astonishing, but sadly, pretty typical of a type of man who believes women exist solely for his pleasure and to serve his needs.

I'm thinking that if he was as attractive, financially stable and as smart as he portrays himself, then there must have been something seriously "off" about him that set off warning signals to women. Like perhaps the fact that he saw women as personal accessories that exist solely to serve as evidence of his manly success, the same way a fast car or a big house might.

Women aren't accessories. Women aren't status symbols. Women can't make everything better in your life if you're not willing to do some work on yourself, like for instance, trying to understand why you think using violence to solve problems is a good idea. Like, why women had to die because your ego was hurt.

These women:
Heidi Overmier, 46, of Carnegie, PA.
Elizabeth Gannon, 49, of Pittsburgh, PA.
Jody Billingsley, 38, of Mount Lebanon, PA.

May they rest in peace and rise in glory. And may all the men who are as horrified about this as women are join us in speaking up and speaking out.