Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): In 1999, a woman named Cindy Hendy was stabbed in the neck with an ice pick by a woman named Cynthia Vigil inside a trailer home in New Mexico. Vigil then fled the scene to a nearby residence, whose owner promptly called the police. …

Caitlin Johnstone

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

 

In 1999, a woman named Cindy Hendy was stabbed in the neck with an ice pick by a woman named Cynthia Vigil inside a trailer home in New Mexico. Vigil then fled the scene to a nearby residence, whose owner promptly called the police. 

She was never charged with any crime.

The reason Cynthia Vigil was never charged with any crime despite having stabbed Cindy Hendy in the neck with an ice pick was because Hendy was an accomplice of the serial killer David Parker Ray, also known as the Toy Box Killer. Vigil’s escape from the trailer where Ray and Hendy had been imprisoning and torturing her led to the pair’s subsequent arrest. Ray died in prison three years later, the full extent of his murder spree still unknown. Hendy served 19 years and was released in 2019.

Cynthia Vigil was never charged with any crime because anyone could see that violent force was an entirely understandable and legitimate response to having been kidnapped and subjected to horrific treatment. It never at any time occurred to anyone to say that she should have acted differently, and it most certainly never occurred to anyone to make her single act of desperate violence the major story instead of the fact that there was a serial killer who’d been abducting women and torturing them in his murder dungeon.

And, I mean, imagine how absurd it would have been if they’d done that. Imagine if, after the Toy Box Killer story broke, all the major headlines were about a woman stabbing another woman with an ice pick. Imagine if the ice pick stabbing was all the press ever wanted to talk about, for month after month after month, instead of the fact that people had been imprisoned and subjected to savage abuse by a cruel serial murderer.

Imagine how absurd it would’ve been if, any time someone was interviewed about this case in the news, they were asked if they condemned Cynthia Vigil for her brutal, evil, sadistic ice pick stabbing of Cindy Hendy. 

Imagine how absurd it would’ve been if the press kept framing the incident as though Hendy was just standing around, innocently minding her own business, and was then victimized by a barbaric and unprovoked attack by Vigil.

Imagine how absurd it would’ve been if everyone kept the story focused on the ice pick stabbing, and any time anyone tried to point out that the stabbing only occurred because Cynthia Vigil was being imprisoned by a deranged serial killer and his female accomplice they were hysterically denounced as Vigil apologists and supporters of neck-stabbing, and told that nothing — absolutely nothing — could ever excuse or justify the violence that Vigil inflicted upon Hendy on that terrible day.

Imagine how absurd it would’ve been if, rather than coming to Vigil’s rescue and arresting those who’d victimized her, the police had returned Vigil to her captors and helped David Parker Ray resume his murderous lifestyle.

Imagine if, while helping David Parker Ray re-establish his status quo lifestyle of kidnapping, torture and murder, arguments were made by law enforcement and the media that Ray’s murder dungeon has a right to exist, and that Ray and his accomplices have a right to defend their home and their way of life.

Imagine if Ray had greatly escalated his murderousness and sadism in full view of the entire world following Cynthia Vigil’s attempted escape, and people defended this by solemnly invoking the horrible, awful day when Vigil launched an unprovoked ice pick attack on Cindy Hendy’s neck.

Imagine if, in order to help justify their support for Ray’s murderous rampage, the police and the media had sown lies and disinformation about what Vigil did during her escape attempt, claiming she sexually assaulted Hendy and beheaded her baby and put its body in an oven.

It’s hard to imagine anything being more ridiculous, is it not? It’s hard to imagine a more obscene reversal of victim and victimizer, and a more absurd response to someone’s desperate efforts to escape from her abusive captors. 

It’s about as backwards and insane as anyone could possibly be about anything, and anyone who tried to get you to believe such an absurdity would obviously be a psychologically abusive gaslighter who should never be believed about anything ever again. Clearly they have a demented perspective, every part of which should be rejected in every way possible.

Anyway, yeah. That’s why I’ve never condemned Hamas for October 7.

...

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Featured image via the New Mexico Corrections Department.