The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

A Criminal History

Posted on | February 19, 2023 | Comments Off on A Criminal History

Kaitlin Roberts (left) and her mother Rebecca Shaw

The weird thing about the YouTube algorithm is its apparent randomness. Saturday night at dinner with my podcast partner John Hoge, I went off on a tangent about the bass riff on the 1966 Simon and Garfunkel hit, “A Hazy Shade of Winter” — something I picked up watching a YouTube video — and then started talking about the guitar parts on Beatles songs, which I’d been studying with YouTube videos by Mike Pachelli. You watch one video like that, YouTube will keep showing you more, and it’s the same with police chase videos — watch one of them, and the algorithm will continue feeding you similar suggestions. My interests are sufficiently eclectic that I get a good variety of YouTube suggestions, especially because I frequently search YouTube for videos related to stories I’m writing about. Still, I have no idea what it was that caused the YouTube algorithm to suggest “Mother shares legacy of daughter killed by ex-husband,” except that I’d previously subscribed to the feed of WUSA-TV news (the CBS affiliate in Washington).

In 2011, Lemuel Roberts was 22 when he was convicted of assault and battery and abduction for a 2010 incident in which he “rammed a woman’s vehicle with his vehicle, then pulled her out of the vehicle and kidnapped her. He beat the woman, with whom he had previously lived, then took her to the Red Roof Inn”:

Roberts was sentenced to 2½ years imprisonment, with two years of the sentence suspended. In 2012, while out on probation, he was charged with drunken driving in Winchester. Police said he fought with them when they tried to arrest him and they had to shock him twice with a Taser to get him handcuffed.
While jailed in 2013, Roberts completed anger management and addiction recovery courses. However, [in June 2019], police said an informant for the Northwestern Virginia Regional Drug and Gang Task Force bought 14 grams of cocaine from Roberts, leading to police raiding his Oakmont Circle home. They said they seized marijuana, hashish oil and $15,000 in cash.

In 2015, Roberts got involved with Kaitlin Jones. The couple married in 2017, and had two children together, but divorced in 2018. Despite the divorce, however, they continued living together, but their domestic situation was not peaceful, and police were repeatedly called to their home near Winchester, Virginia. He killed her in 2020:

A jury found a Virginia man guilty of first-degree murder on Thursday for his involvement in the 2020 stabbing death of his ex-wife.
Lemuel Lee Roberts, 34, of Winchester, Virginia is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday, April 21, 2023, at 9 a.m. for his alleged involvement in the following incident.
Shortly after 2 a.m. on Jan. 11, 2020, a 911 caller reported finding a body in the roadway at English Muffin Court and English Muffin Way in Frederick, Maryland. The victim was later identified as Kaitlin Nichole Roberts of Winchester, Virginia.
Investigators determined that Lemuel Lee Roberts traveled to Frederick, Maryland with his ex-wife Kaitlin Roberts and stabbed her 32 times and ran over her body while driving a Buick Enclave.

Well, it was just the randomness of the YouTube algorithm that brought this story to my attention, with the video of Kaitlin’s mother:

 

There’s this from the Frederick paper’s account of the trial:

After the verdict was announced, a member of Lemuel Roberts’ family stormed out of the courtroom. As she was leaving, she said, toward Kaitlin Roberts’ family: “She’s going to stay dead. It doesn’t f—— matter.”

Just a crime I learned about because of the YouTube algorithm. These things seem random, but some people think there must be a pattern . . .



 

 

Category: Violence Against Women

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