watch, stole $15 from his pocket and also slipped a ring off one of his fingers. A ring which he sold for $20 on his way home from the attack.
The victim was identified as Noel Perez, aged 44, who worked in a hospital and lived on his own. The press reported that it was a random mugging, and that little could be done to apprehend the assailant.
That fatal encounter on the subway train predetermined the remainder of Willie’s life. He had always wondered what it would feel like to actually kill someone, and what made him feel really powerful was the fact that no one had seen him do it. He even bragged to his sister about the murder, and feeling empowered by the fact that he appeared to have got away with the crime, told her that now he was ‘bad’, just like he’d told everyone he would be.
THE BOSKET FAMILY LEGACY
Willie was in effect living out a legacy that had been handed down to him from a history of violence rooted in Edgefield County, South Carolina. It appeared that almost every member of Willie’s paternal family – father, grandfather, great grandfather – had been convicted at one time or another of a violent crime.
However, this is not a story of inherited genes, it is one of brutalization and injustice that was handed down from generation to generation. The story starts with slavery in South Carolina, in a county called Edgefield. It was the scene of violence and mayhem and it became nicknamed ‘Bloody Edgefield’. The inhabitants of Edgefield were mainly Scottish–Irish refugees running from war and oppression. These refugees lived by a medieval code of honour and that was ‘if you insulted a man, cheated him, or cast a covetous eye on his wife he would kill you’.
In 1760 the Cherokee Indians ravaged the area, which caused gangs of outlaws to spring up in Edgefield. They took to abducting women and torturing planters and merchants for their valuables. This plundering led to outrage among the settlers and they formed bands of vigilantes in an effort to suppress the gangs. It was these vigilantes or ‘regulators’ that introduced the strain of violence that was to be the curse and fate of South Carolina. Their punishments were severe, and one recorded case was that a horse thief received 500 lashes for his crime.
Crime started to escalate in this area of South Carolina. In fact, records show that during the first half of the nineteenth century, rural South Carolina – and in particular Edgefield – had a murder rate four times as high as that of urban Massachusetts. This type of crime was white-on-white violence over topics such as ownership of land, their women and honouring the code of conduct the original refugees had established. While all this was going on the slaves had been observing from their fields and shacks, learning the ‘bloody code’. One of these slaves was Aaron Bosket, who was Willie’s great-great-grandfather. His master was a man named Francis Pickens who was the Governor of South Carolina. It was Pickens who helped to kindle the Civil War by ordering his military forces to seize Federal property in Charleston. Aaron, being a slave under white masters, after the war became a sharecropper under white landowners. Despite the fact that he had been terrorized and cheated out of his rightful money from his crops, he was too frightened to actually do anything about it. His son, ‘Pud’, however, was a totally different kettle of fish.
It was quite normal that even up until 1910 white landlords were known to have given their black sharecroppers more than a few lashes of the whip. It was meant to be a ritual of degradation, reminding them that they were no more than slaves. But Pud, who was now twenty-one, was not prepared to endure this humiliation.
‘This is the last nigger you’re going to whip,’ he cried, and grabbed the whip away from the landlord. Having defied a white master, Pud was turned away and was unable to get work within the area. Instead he
The victim was identified as Noel Perez, aged 44, who worked in a hospital and lived on his own. The press reported that it was a random mugging, and that little could be done to apprehend the assailant.
That fatal encounter on the subway train predetermined the remainder of Willie’s life. He had always wondered what it would feel like to actually kill someone, and what made him feel really powerful was the fact that no one had seen him do it. He even bragged to his sister about the murder, and feeling empowered by the fact that he appeared to have got away with the crime, told her that now he was ‘bad’, just like he’d told everyone he would be.
THE BOSKET FAMILY LEGACY
Willie was in effect living out a legacy that had been handed down to him from a history of violence rooted in Edgefield County, South Carolina. It appeared that almost every member of Willie’s paternal family – father, grandfather, great grandfather – had been convicted at one time or another of a violent crime.
However, this is not a story of inherited genes, it is one of brutalization and injustice that was handed down from generation to generation. The story starts with slavery in South Carolina, in a county called Edgefield. It was the scene of violence and mayhem and it became nicknamed ‘Bloody Edgefield’. The inhabitants of Edgefield were mainly Scottish–Irish refugees running from war and oppression. These refugees lived by a medieval code of honour and that was ‘if you insulted a man, cheated him, or cast a covetous eye on his wife he would kill you’.
In 1760 the Cherokee Indians ravaged the area, which caused gangs of outlaws to spring up in Edgefield. They took to abducting women and torturing planters and merchants for their valuables. This plundering led to outrage among the settlers and they formed bands of vigilantes in an effort to suppress the gangs. It was these vigilantes or ‘regulators’ that introduced the strain of violence that was to be the curse and fate of South Carolina. Their punishments were severe, and one recorded case was that a horse thief received 500 lashes for his crime.
Crime started to escalate in this area of South Carolina. In fact, records show that during the first half of the nineteenth century, rural South Carolina – and in particular Edgefield – had a murder rate four times as high as that of urban Massachusetts. This type of crime was white-on-white violence over topics such as ownership of land, their women and honouring the code of conduct the original refugees had established. While all this was going on the slaves had been observing from their fields and shacks, learning the ‘bloody code’. One of these slaves was Aaron Bosket, who was Willie’s great-great-grandfather. His master was a man named Francis Pickens who was the Governor of South Carolina. It was Pickens who helped to kindle the Civil War by ordering his military forces to seize Federal property in Charleston. Aaron, being a slave under white masters, after the war became a sharecropper under white landowners. Despite the fact that he had been terrorized and cheated out of his rightful money from his crops, he was too frightened to actually do anything about it. His son, ‘Pud’, however, was a totally different kettle of fish.
It was quite normal that even up until 1910 white landlords were known to have given their black sharecroppers more than a few lashes of the whip. It was meant to be a ritual of degradation, reminding them that they were no more than slaves. But Pud, who was now twenty-one, was not prepared to endure this humiliation.
‘This is the last nigger you’re going to whip,’ he cried, and grabbed the whip away from the landlord. Having defied a white master, Pud was turned away and was unable to get work within the area. Instead he
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