Prison Love

I'm not the first to point this out, but did you ever wonder why so many assassins go by three names?  Lee Harvey Oswald (John Kennedy's murderer), James Earl Ray (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King), and John Wilkes Booth (Abraham Lincoln), and the list goes on with vermin such as Mark David Chapman, who gunned down John Lennon, and this trio of serial killers...Gary Leon Ridgway, John Wayne Gacy, and Paul John Knowles.

And let's not leave out Jared Lee Loughner, who shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people while doing so. He and his names reside at the Federal Correction Center in Rochester, Minnesota for the next long, long time.

It's even become a weird sort of joke, as in the way The Drew Carey Show on TV had a character named Oswald Lee Harvey, played by Diedrich Bader, so beloved in "Office Space" as Lawrence, whose middle and last names were never revealed (but I'm fairly certain he went by all three).

"Effin-A, man!"

That brings me around to mentioning one of the worst people ever to make the Baltimore-Washington -Virginia landscape bleak, Lee Boyd Malvo. At 17, in the company of three-named John Allen Muhammad, LBM went on a killing spree, leaving 10 dead and three wounded.

Malvo, who makes his home in the fabulous Red Onion State Prison in southwest Virginia, is a newly wed man!

A friend named Carmeta Albarus told the Washington POST that Malvo tied the knot last week.

“Over the past 17 years, he has grown despite his conditions of confinement,” she told the paper. “He has grown into an adult and has found love with a wonderful young lady. ... It was a beautiful ceremony.”

She declined to identify the bride, leaving us to wonder how many names she goes by.

Malvo's future is cloudy. Once sentenced to life with parole, he benefited from new legislation in Virginia giving those who committed crimes under the age of 18 the right to seek parole after serving 20 years. That means he would be eligible for that long-postponed honeymoon in 2024.

Except that he was sentenced to life in prison in Maryland.

I don't mean to make sport of this young man, who seemed to fall under some mesmerizing spell from his older colleague Muhammad. Still and all, he committed the offenses, he killed people, and while he might be entitled to fall in love and be married, I think he should enjoy his new status from within prison walls.

The wedding was not covered in the POST "Style" section, but the paper did report that "rules in Virginia state prisons strictly regulate inmate weddings. Witnesses and guests are restricted to a maximum of six, and any refreshments served must be obtained from the prison vending machines. Also, according to the regulations, a wedding 'shall not result in the granting of any special privileges for the consummation of the marriage following the ceremony or thereafter.' "

So, there's that. A couple of Frescas and a bag of Doritos and no hookup. Good.