So there's this guy, and he killed his girlfriend—whose dismembered body parts were found scattered throughout his apartment—and he confessed to having boiled some of her flesh. And he is also now being investigated "in the mutilation killings of an unidentified prostitute in April and an ex-girlfriend whose body was found in 2004."
How would you describe him in a news story you were writing? "Confessed murderer Jose Luis Calva," maybe? "Possible serial killer Jose Luis Calva," perhaps? If you were feeling a little sensationalistic, writing for the Daily Mail or the NY Post, say, possibly you'd go with something like "Remorseless ripper Jose Luis Calva." All of those would be appropriate.
The AP, however, because the draft of a novel titled Cannibalistic Instincts was found in his apartment, leads with: "An aspiring horror novelist was arrested after police discovered his girlfriend's torso in his closet, a leg in the refrigerator and bones in a cereal box, the city prosecutor's spokesman said Thursday."
Aspiring horror novelist Jose Luis Calva.
Worse yet, by the time CNN sticks its headline on, he's a writer, full-stop. "Writer suspect in dismembering girlfriend." Because this fiend spent his downtime between butchering women feverishly recording for posterity his grotesque wank fantasies (which Judith Regan is probably trying to commission as we speak), we're going to turn him into a fucking artiste and shit.
Which, admittedly, is still an improvement on Yahoo's headline: "Mexican arrested in dismemberment case."
Yeesh.
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