Jamie Rose Bolin

While working out on the treadmill Friday, I listened to the initial reports on CNN that they had found Jamie Rose Bolin’s body. There were no details at that point, except to say she had been found in the same neighborhood she lived. As the weekend progressed, more details have been revealed, and the story is just horrific. This little girl’s father will never be the same again. To discover that his missing child was murdered and being kept in the apartment below his is unimaginable. It’s a nightmare.

The man who killed her had apparently kept a blog, and wrote about his mental health, and not taking his anti-depressants. He said that his thoughts and ‘fantasies’ were becoming weirder, and he knew they would put him away if they ever found out the things he wanted to do. What he ended up, and further planned doing to Jamie Rose is too much for me to even write out in this post.

I am continually catching my breath when I think of the fear that must have surged through her body when he captured her. This terrifies me the most. What she must have been thinking in those final hours. I pray she didn’t have any pain, and that it happened quickly.

In light of this monstrosity, I am thinking of someone unexpected - Tom Cruise. We all know that he believes that anti depressants simply “mask the problem”, and that ‘there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance”. But if the accused was in fact mentally ill, then I have to ask myself if Jamie Rose’s death could have been prevented. Living in San Francisco near Union Square, I see large numbers of homeless people everyday – many of whom are mentally ill. They walk around talking to themselves, screaming at no one in particular, screaming at diet coke bottles, screaming at me. Is their imbalance my imagination? Is it the poorly nourished diet, that includes genetically altered or chemically processed foods?

And what of the blog this guy kept? This all seems too little too late. Should there be a monitor of sorts for blogs now, in the hopes that crimes like this could be avoided? I told Max that I fear these things must happen more often than we know about, and he questioned whether films today are planting seeds in the minds of those who do them. This of course brings up the age-old debate about whether art imitates life, or vice versa. Obviously, as an artist, I am torn on the topic.

After reading this post, please take sixty seconds out of your day, close your eyes and just send your positive energy and light to the spirit of this little girl and her family. It will cost you nothing, and the ripple effects of positive energy are never wasted.