Yesterday I griped that the current Times-News series on a triple murder from forty years ago was lacking in its open discussion of some of the things that doubtless contributed to the murder investigation and the community’s reaction, if not the murder itself:  the lives of gay people in the ’60s, the prejudice against them then and now, the community’s unwillingness to discuss them above a whisper and attitudes towards single, independent women.  I have to at least mostly rectract my complaints, as today’s issue included a story devoted entirely to attitudes at the time, a story that openly discusses the “compromising photographs” rumored to exist from the victims’ large parties (if the pictures existed, they were probably destroyed immediately after the victims were found dead) and some pretty detailed discussions of several then-suspects in the case.

So, I take that back.

That said, isn’t it enlightening (somehow, of something) to note how people who didn’t actually know the guys are quick to fall back on the rumors that the photos were of underage victims of sexual or drug abuse?

As I said yesterday, at least one of the major revelations of these stories – news that perhaps isn’t so new – is how quickly people will fall back into the attitudes and beliefs of that time, their personal prejudices, their personal beliefs.