OF COURSE, JACK STRAW RESENTS THEIR DIFFERENTNESS:

Killer's wife is invited guest at first Amish funeral (BARRY WIGMORE, 6th October 2006, Daily Mail)

In a ceremony made more heartbreaking by its centuries-old simplicity, four little girls were buried yesterday as the Amish of Pennsylvania turned the other cheek.

With television and newspaper cameras kept at a distance, and police helicopters enforcing a no-fly zone overhead, one of the few non-Amish guests invited to the funeral of seven-year-old Naomi Rose Ebersole, the first little girl to be buried, was Marie Roberts, the killer's wife.

With tears in her eyes, Mrs Roberts sat in the back of one of the 34 black horse-drawn carriages that were part of the funeral cortege behind Naomi's horse-drawn hearse.

On the way from the church to the hilltop cemetary, the procession passed Mrs Roberts' home where her husband, Charles, loaded up his guns before heading for the little village school on Monday. [...]

Within hours of the shootings, it emerged yesterday that a neighbour knocked on the Roberts family's door to pray for them and extend forgiveness.

Another neighbour, Daniel Esh, a 57-year-old Amish artist and woodworker whose three grandnephews were inside the school during the attack, said: `I hope they stay around here. They'll have a lot of friends and a lot of support.'

Community leaders said that Mrs Roberts and her children may even receive money from a fund established to help victims and their families.

What's wrong with these people, that they don't want to fit in to the culture that produced the killer?

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 6, 2006 8:15 AM