Killed Over What?! More Lamest Motives for Murder

April 17, 2013 3:31 PM By Bryan Lavietes

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In this day and age, being killed over a Facebook status doesn’t seem too far fetched. But for peeing off a balcony? A look at some of the lamest motives for murder.

Cute baby feet

Killed Over Baby Names
November 22, 2010: It should have been a happy time for Joseph Cummings, 51, of Lynnfield, Massachusetts. He was expecting a baby with his girlfriend Kimberly Nguyen, 35, but investigators believe a dispute over baby names led to a deadly confrontation. Just a day after hosting a baby shower for Nguyen where everything seemed to be going well, an unhinged Cummings shot her to death, and then fired fatal shots at her sister Lilly Nguyen, 29. Cummings then committed suicide with the same gun.

Eric Rodriguez, inset: Victim Marco Bequett

Killed Over a PlayStation
December 31, 2012: There would be no New Year’s celebrations for Marco Bequett, 20, this year as Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s deputies found the young man dead on a roadside. More shocking was the motive for the brutal crime: when Eric Rodriguez, 21, and Jeremy Lopez, 17, were arrested a few days later, investigators learned the dispute was over a Sony PlayStation Bequett had allegedly stolen from them. Sadder still was the fact that Bequett himself was supposed to be in custody for an aggravated battery charge of his own. A bureaucratic snafu in the state’s Children, Youth and Families Department freed Bequett nearly a year earlier than his sentence required.

Emma Forrester

Killed Over Facebook Status
2008: In the space of a few months, Britain was rocked by two murders, both incited by the victims’ Facebook status. In February, Wayne Forrester, 34 and his wife Emma separated. Four days later, Wayne noticed that his estranged wife had changed her status to “single”. Enraged by the Facebook page, Wayne binged on alcohol and cocaine before driving to the family home in New Addington, where he attacked his sleeping wife with a meat cleaver. Neighbors heard the screams and called police. When they arrived, Wayne walked out of the house covered in blood, holding a carton of juice. “My wife is in there,” he announced, “I killed her.”

Tracey Grinhaff

Then in May, the gruesome scenario played out once more. Gary Grinhaff, 41, bludgeoned Tracey, his wife of 16 years and mother of his two daughters, and stashed her body in a backyard shed of their Wombwell home. Police found Gary’s body in some nearby woods an hour later – he had smashed his own head in. The catalyst was thought to have been a dissolving marriage that Tracey announced on her Facebook status that she was “currently splitting” from Gary.

Killed for Urinating off a Balcony
September 18, 2012: Roosevelt Robinson, 35, was visiting with friends for a late-night game of dominoes in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, when nature called. Instead of relieving himself in a toilet, he walked out to a second-floor porch and made it rain below. Unfortunately, an unidentified person cutting between two houses was caught in the impromptu golden shower. That person, angry and indignant, happened to be carrying a gun and fired shots up at the urine’s source. Robinson was hit and killed. “I don’t think I have ever encountered anything like this,” said Lt. Andrew Schurman of the Allegheny County Police.