“Convicted child killer Anthony Stockelman’s face and head were unmarked at his trial last year. But now he’s turned up at Wabash Correctional Facility with a tattoo on the forehead reading ‘Katie’s revenge.’ Katie is Katie Collman of Crothersville, the little girl he confessed to raping and killing last year. The Department of Corrections is not saying who applied the tattoo, which is against prison regulations, or why. They say they are still investigating. Katie’s dad, John Neace, has his own theory. Wednesday he said, ‘If I had to guess I’d say it’s a statement from the inmates.’ Katie’s father says he heard about the tattoo from friends and has no idea if Katie’s distant cousin, who is also serving time at Wabash, played any role. Neace continued, ‘When I first saw it I wondered if someone was playing a hoax with these pictures. Then I looked a little bit further and found it was a news channel that was putting his picture out. And I knew it had to be real.’ Terry Gray, a Collman family friend told Eyewitness News, ‘I figure that probably mister Stockelman was given the choice of a tattoo or facing the same thing that Katie did. In the early interviews they have with him when he was in prison, when he first got there, it was kind of like a vacation to him, wasn’t too bad at all. So I’d say he probably has a change of heart about that now.’” — WTHR (US)

Here is a picture of Mr. Stockelman’s new tattoo. His forehead does look rather irritated, suggesting that perhaps the rendering of the tattoo was not a very pleasant experience for him. And given that pedophiles are the lowest of the low in the social strata of most correctional facilities, you can certainly take a reasonable guess who the tattoo artists were — the same guys whom Mr. Stockelman is loathe to accompany to the showers, for fear Katie will get another sort of vicarious revenge on his tender parts. Don’t drop the soap, buddy!

You get the sense that prison officials aren’t too upset that this branding occurred in their facility. Gosh, they don’t know how this could have happened. Gosh, tattooing is against the rules. Gosh, they can’t even imagine how the picture of Mr. Stockelman’s tattoo leaked to the media. Gosh, they’ll sure move the poor guy “to an area of increased security” — which means: Gosh, they’ll make sure nothing else happens to him until the media interest blows over, and then they’ll put him back into the general population with his new boyfriends.

This wink-wink attitude expresses what most people probably feel: if the guy really did rape and kill this little girl, a crime to which he confessed, then he pretty much deserves his scarlet letter. As a free and “enlightened” society, we’re supposed to frown on this sort of treatment. We’re supposed to take the attitude that criminals are able to be redeemed, that they can pay their debt and then resume their positions in civil society. We’re supposed to think all that — but damn, somehow that doesn’t lessen the secret pleasure of seeing a guy get what you think he really has coming to him.

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