Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Rest In Peace, Camden Pierce Hughes

Every so often there's a story that just wrenches your heart.

This is one of them. A boy was found dead in the woods in rural South Berwick, Maine, over the weekend, and yesterday morning a Texas mother was taken into custody after sources say she confessed to police that she killed him.

There are many heartbreaking aspects to this crime. For starters, 6-year-old Camden Pierce Hughes is dead and any life cut that short is tragic. Speculation abounds. You hope that it was just a horrible accident, but one wonders about the mindset of someone from the Dallas area, nearly 2,000 miles from New England, and why they would drive all this way for no apparent reason. A person staying in the neighboring room in the New Hampshire Seacoast hotel said he heard the mother yelling at Camden through the walls. I can't even imagine what poor Camden was thinking this whole time he was en route to New England.

What really disturbed me is that apparently the mother, Julianne McCrery, is the published author of Good Night, Sleep Tight: How To Fall Asleep and Go Back To Sleep When You Wake Up. (I post the Amazon link here not to give her free publicity but just to provide evidence that I'm not making this up.) It currently boasts an Amazon average star rating of 1.0, based on one, 1-star review, in which the reviewer minces no words about how she feels about her considering recent events. And 77-of-129 people found the review helpful. The book does not seem to be geared at motherhood but more on insomnia-related issues.

It's just a sad, sad story all the way around. It shouldn't have ended this way. Rest in peace, Camden Pierce Hughes.

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