Long reads 1

http://www.texasmonthly.com/cms/printthis.php?file=feature2.php&issue=2012-01-01
I read about the death of a boy named Andrew Burd. Andrew was a foster child who was adopted by the Burd family. The mother was named Hannah and the father named Larry. They were very religious and Christian and spent a lot of their lives helping other and going on mission trips. The adopted Andrew and he began to show odd signs. He would always be hungry no matter what and ate and ate. He threw tantrums and became very violent to himself when he wouldn't be fed. The family says multiple times, they refused to give him more food and he would go to the bathroom on the floor and rub the feces all over himself and the house in anger. One Andrew became very ill and started throwing up. He ended up dying the next morning, and the cause was food poisoning. They said that he had 3 times the average amount of salt in his system. The mother was convicted of child abuse and murder. They found bruises on his body, his nose, brain damage, and blaimed it on the mother. Hannah had never hurt a child and never broken the law. The only bad part about her past was her father, who murdered a 16 year old boy. After being in jail, they appealed the case and found that there was insufficient evidence, and a salt poisoning expert thought that is was most likely an accident.
I think that Hannah did it. She seems to have done many missions where she helped kids, but I think it hurt her to know that she couldn't help Andrew. He was out of control, and it seems that she abused him. He had bruises on his body, and bruises on his nose which could show that she held his nose closed while she forced him to eat. I think she could have forced him to eat out of anger of him always being hungry. Also she knew that he had a possible eating disorder, and yet she continued to not let him have seconds or more food, causing him to throw fits where he would rub his feces all over the house and himself. I think this is poor parenting to let her son hurt himself and do that to himself.

Sheppard

Evan Ratliff decided to disappear from society and see if anyone could find him. A group of people ended up finding him in September of 2009. I can relate Evan Ratliff’s experience with Chris McCandless and his travels from the book “Into the Wild”. Chris McCandless left his home and decided to go off radar and into the wild. No one knew where he was and he traveled as he pleased. This connects to what Ratliff did because he also decided to disappear and travel around. They both stayed in touch with humans at the same time though. Chris would make friends along the way and even send them letters after he left their area. Ratliff would meet people too and even stayed active on twitter. Also I think their motive for disappearing was different. I think McCandless left because he was disgusted with how society acted and held different values then the average person. He wanted to experience the outdoors and leave his footprint all the way up to Alaska. It seemed like Ratliff was stressed and felt a huge weight on his shoulders that he couldn’t carry anymore. He needed to find out who he was and his true identity. Also he faked his death, while McCandless simply just left.