The popular nighttime television show, Dateline: After Midnight (frequently on the Investigation Discovery channel), revisited the murder of Brockport freshman, Alexandra Kogut in 2012. The episode aired on January 4th, 2015. Lester Holt began to describe the terrifying scene that was left in her dorm room after her two-year boyfriend, Clayton Whittemore, beat her to death with his fists and a curling iron.
The story goes that Whittemore and Kogut were walking back to her dorm room where they were stopped because Whittemore was holding an open can of beer. This incident must've caused a little tension between the two because he stormed off to his separate way. Back in her dorm room the fight must've been happening again. Physical altercations began and then Whittemore just "snapped", as he said. "I wasn't even drunk. I just snapped." He began punching her and beating her almost to death. The blood everywhere. "I didn’t want the girl I loved to suffer, so I started beating her with the curling iron until the noise stopped.” He knew he had hurt her to the point of death, and assuming that she was choking on her own blood, he took the curling iron and beat her. Bludgeoned, disfigured, and unidentifiable, she laid on the dorm floor until police found her body. They couldn't even tell if it was her or not because of how bad the beating was. After this tragedy, it was found out that she was in a psychological and physical abusive relationship with him. It's so sad and unfortunate that it had gotten this far.
Dateline NBC commonly provides tv shows like this with some sort of warning and precautions to the people watching. It's an educational tool without people even realizing it. Lester Holt and the other people working for/with Dateline provide the types of tips and things to know for people if they ever happen to get into a certain situation similar to said event in the episode. As an avid watcher, I definitely recommend the public to watch this and gain the knowledge that can save their lives, which I hope they'll never need to use.
I often watch these shows and like you said, learn quite a bit. I didn't however see the Brockport episode. Did it give any information on what to do if you are in an abusive relationship or being attacked?
ReplyDeletewhat is the boyfriends mental background? was he also deemed stable?
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