Paranoia or The Rumblings of an Out of Control World?

I think we have all read or heard the story of Anna Le whose body was found this past Sunday in a basement building where she worked as a medical researcher. What makes this story all the more tragic is that Anna Le, beautiful, young and a life full of promise was found dead on the day she was to be married to her college sweetheart, Columbia University graduate student Jonathan Widawsky. The police cited it as an act of workplace violence. There didn't appear to be any motive and if there was, the police aren't saying. Raymond Clark III was arrested for the crime. Clark looks like any normal guy but then so did Ted Bundy. Richard Levin, president of Yale, gave a statement after Clark's arrest saying that his employment history gave no indication he was capable of such a crime.  

What is happening to the world and the people in it that we now have to worry about our safety not just from gangs and the usual lifetime criminals like robbers, murderers, rapists and child molesters but now everyday people. We now have to worry about the person sitting next to us on the bus who seems to gaze at us just a beat too long or the guy who just started jogging on the same trail and seems to follow just a bit too closely, or the neighbor several doors down who seems so nice but a bit 'off' or as in Anna Le's case, someone we work with.

What causes seemingly normal random people to suddenly commit an act of violence, without reason or motive? Have we all become so desensitized by the media that taking a life means nothing? Or is it as many of the television evangelists have predicted; that we are reverting back to beasts?  

Is it that there is more violence now than back in our parent's day or is it that we are just hearing more about it because we have such access to it?

While watching 'Women Behind Bars' one evening, I decided to watch a few and hear their stories and the one thing that was said over and over was, "I just lost control. It happened so fast..."

I remember thinking, "That could happen to anyone". We all have lost control at some point in our lives but to lose enough control that you actually end someone's life? I could never, ever imagine such a thing. And yet, day after day we see pictures of women who have been murdered by their husbands or boyfriends or children  whose death was caused by their own parents hands.

I don't understand it...I never will.

Paranoia or a World Out of Control? You tell me...