These days it is not neccesary to walk down a dark alley on the wrong side of town, or have a breakdown beside a rain-soaked country road, to be murdered. You can just hang out with the people you work with every day.

The news here in Atlanta is that a girl attending my alma mater, Kennesaw State University, was raped and killed in her apartment after attending a rave party with a co-worker. Had she known more about her companion for the evening she might not have elected to rave with him that night, for he was a known raving lunatic!

Laureen Cooper's alleged raper and murderer, Kendrick Ledet, was a former Marine who made international headlines 11 years ago when he and two fellow soldiers went on trial for the rape of a 12-year-old Japanese girl. (He was never charged with rape but was charged with abduction and violence.) It has been reported Cooper and Ledet worked at a restaurant together.

This mirrors another college girl murder story that just came to its denoument a few months ago. Emory University student Shannon Melendi was raped and murdered 11 years ago by a man named Colvin Hinton she worked with at a softball park. She was a scorekeeper and he was an umpire. They were going to a fast food restaurant for lunch. Melendi probably didn't know Colvin had served 15 months in prison for kidnapping a 14-year-old girl in Illinois in 1982. Police have since speculated Melendi's killer may have been a serial killer and could lead them to more bodies.

We make the presumption that the people in our immediate orbit are there because they're very similar to ourselves. When we fill out job applications we give our Social Security Number and two most recent residences, and of course whoever receives these applications carefully checks these things out. Right? RIGHT?

There oughta be a law that if someone comes into your work zone who has a criminal record of any kind -- shoplifting, passing a bad check, whatever -- you should receive a neon-yellow sheet of paper on your desk, in your locker, or on a break room bulletin board, loudly announcing that a person of criminal record is going to be working near you. Calm down, now! He/she has paid their debt to society, and Mr. Boss Man is just sure they've learned their lesson and are completely trustworthy. Right? RIGHT?

I've heard people in my high-brow work space on the Chicago Stock Exchange (okay, I'm B.S.'ing you, I work in a call center) talking about being on parole. A rather humorous-but-scary e-mail went around one Christmas from someone asking that their samurai sword be returned (I didn't see John Belushi in the call center). Sometimes oddball items like picture frames are reported missing ("You can keep the frame, but please return the photo of my son.").

It is in times like these I thank God I don't have a physique that could give a potential murder-rapist a hard on if I should find myself accidentally lunching with them. Right. RIGHT?

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