Lily Burk: possible victim of the War on Drugs, incompetence (and naivete)
Alcoholic victim of the month:
Lily Burk’s body was found in a car in downtown Los Angeles. Her neck had been slashed a bit over 12 hours earlier. Shortly after her murder, Charlie Samuel, 50, was apprehended for public intoxication and having a crack pipe in his pocket. Two days later, Samuel was charged with Burk’s murder after police matched his fingerprints with those found in the car. Samuel was a drug addict with a “colorful” criminal history, including convictions for assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping and robbery. He was given early parole because California’s prisons are arguably filled with too many non-violent offenders and, while he should have been tried and convicted on a third strike under California’s “three strikes and you’re out” law, wasn’t—because a clerk wrongly identified one of his prior crimes. Burk, 17, may well have been a victim of the failed war on drugs and a clerk’s incompetence.
After this was published in the Thorburn Addiction Report, I learned that she may also have been a victim of naivete–not only her own, but also her parents. It’s possible her parents encouraged her to “help” the homeless, who are (or were) almost always drug addicts. This is extraordinarily dangerous–and it would be naive to think otherwise. She should never have been where she was–and IF her parents had anything to do with that, they could at least help other parents avoid a similar fate by coming clean.