Mighty Hateful, For a Burglary

Well, I'm glad to have this cleared up... It's Not a Hate Crime If It's Committed Against Christians.

This isn't exactly an open-and-shut case, but I really doubt that this was a killing motivated by money. Maybe McDonald and Sanchez are really guilty, and they're just smarter than I give them credit for. Then again, maybe they're not.

Parts of the murder are consistent with a hate killing. For instance, Coptic Christians have crosses tattooed onto their arms when they're little (a way to distinguish them from the Muslims in Egypt), and these tattoos fade as time goes by. The victims' tattoos, however, were found slashed, in the manner of a hate killing. Your average thug won't know about the tattoos, and thus wouldn't know enough to make this look like a hate crime.

Furthermore, the victims' family issued this statement:

"The Armaniouses were not rich. Hossam and his wife, Amal, lived modestly with their two young girls in Jersey City. Despite speculation regarding a possibly robbery, the facts before us today appear to contradict such a supposition. The jewelry in the home, including Amal's ring, worth approximately $3,500, was left intact. As far as knowledge of our own family, the family did not keep large amounts of cash in their home so as to invite such a crime."

This does not appear to be a robbery. Yes, Armanious's ATM card was used, but it just doesn't make sense. If this is a robbery after all, then we're dealing with some *really stupid crooks*. After all, they took the ATM card (easily traced) but left the $3500 ring which could have been sold? It seems that a profit was merely an afterthought, a little "perk" to these killings.

Here is an older, but more informative article on the murders.

From what I've seen, this was an anti-Christian killing. IF the motive was robbery, then why the slashed crosses? If they were simply thieves who were covering their tracks, they did so in such an intelligent way that it contradicts their sloppy manner of robbing the place, taking ATM cards instead of valuable rings (from a family that lived rather modestly anyway). The theory that this was motivated by greed just doesn't add up.

However, IF this is motivated by hate, it makes sense. It has the markings of a hate killing, as the victims were activists, had little worth stealing, and had the crosses on their wrists slashed by someone who knew where to look for the tattoos. The robbery looks more like it was an afterthought... "Hey, this guy's dead, he won't be needing this anymore!"

I just don't buy it; robbery was not the motive for these murders. Now, I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, but it looks like someone's trying to cover this up.

How can any investigator just write off all the evidence that tells us this was a hate killing? If it were a gay activist who had been killed (or even just a random homosexual), I guarantee you there would be an ongoing investigation, because any time a homosexual is murdered, and someone uses his credit card, it *must be* hate crime. However, if a middle Christian family is killed and mutilated and their ATM card stolen, the motive is *obviously* robbery.

My guess is that someone doesn't want to make waves, so they are writing this incident off. Again, I don't like conspiracy theories, but the facts of the murders point to:

A.) thieves who are not only intelligent enough to make it look like a hate killing, but also too stupid to take the valuables they just killed for;

or

B.) hateful zealots who took advantage of the opportunity they had after the murder.

Which sounds more reasonable?