How Long Can A Rage Last?

How long can a rage last?

In People v. Thomas Justice Mosk argued that, to him, the evidence suggested that the murders had resulted from "an explosion of violence" and "a brutal attack." In another post, I argued that Greg and Mary had been viciously attacked because a weapon was at hand before and during the attack and this indicated that the attack had been deliberate. I now think that Thomas more than likely committed the murders and that he had to return to Rainbow Village to get his rifle before he carried out a rage-fueled attack. I think that Vivian Cercy heard Greg say to Thomas, "Leave her alone; she's got two kids" before Thomas approached her vehicle, and that this sparked Thomas's anger and gradually sent him into a rage.

Did Thomas attempt to scare Cercy before or after Vincent Johnson saw him with Greg and Mary near the dump gate? Johnson testified that Thomas looked angry when he saw them around 0230. What bugged me about this detail early on was the question it raised: Why did Thomas look angry? Thomas said that he had shared some pot and his broken pipe with Greg and Mary, and giving him the benefit of the doubt, I thought he might have looked angry because Johnson's appearance irritated him for some reason. I don't think this was the case.

Cercy's testimony put the blanked-face man's threats at her car window after she heard the firecracker sounds, but her timeline didn't make sense. It did make sense that Harry Shorman had put her up to giving a misleading testimony with facts and fiction sewn together. This posed the problem of separating the facts from the fiction in her story. In her account of what transpired at or near her vehicle, she distinguished a white voice from a non-white voice, and that she said that she'd blanked-out the hostile man's face, grabbed my attention. The podcast wanted the audience to think that two white man had approached the Dodge Dart, but that is demonstrably not true. If a white man and a black man had approached the car then I thought it possible that this was Greg and International. Vivian either didn't hear Mary or she didn't mention it.

It's possible that Thomas threatened Cercy on their way back to the Village, that Greg told him to leave her alone, and that this sent Thomas into a rage. But Thomas looked angry when Johnson passed by around 0230. And Mary's mother believed that the two had been killed near the entrance to the dump, so they probably didn’t go back to the Village but stayed near where Johnson had seen the three. So this suggests that propelled by rage, Thomas left Mary and Greg near the gate and returned to his vehicle (perhaps telling the two that he'd get some weed) to get his rifle. 

I think some might find it difficult to believe that a few words of criticism would send someone into a rage but it happens. And in some a rage can last for hours, so more time may have elapsed between Johnson's walking by the three and the murders than what I'm imagining.

When you consider that Thomas had a rifle, that he knew how to load and reload that rifle, that he had ammunition, and that his pipe was found at or near the scene of the crime, the evidence leads you to the conclusion that he more than likely did it. And two young people lost their lives because one of them did a decent thing...