Unfinished Lives

Richard Hernandez’s Alleged Murderer Incompetent to Stand Trial?

Richard Hernandez (l), and Seth Winder, courtesy of Dallas Voice

Denton, TX: Seth Winder, 29, prime suspect in the horrific dismemberment of out gay Dallasite, Richard Hernandez, has been ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial and is being remanded to a mental health facility for treatment.

Hernandez, out gay resident of a portion of far north Dallas in Denton County, was slain in a grisly, Silence-of-the-Lambs-style fashion in his apartment in early September 2008.  Investigators found tissue from Hernandez’s internal organs in a bathtub, but his body has never been found.  Informed sources speculate that his dismembered body was disposed of in a Dumpster, and subsequently buried in a landfill.

Winder was first suspected of the murder when he allegedly used debit cards belonging to Hernandez some days after the murder.  Blood-coated evidence was found by police at two campsites where Winder spent time.  They also recovered a camera in Winder’s father’s home that preserved “pornographic images” of Seth Winder in Hernandez’s apartment.

Derek Adame, Winder’s court-appointed defense attorney, told reporters that his client was being sent to a psychiatric facility for treatment because he seemed not to understand the charges against him and had trouble communicating to build a defense on his behalf.  A Denton County judge ordered the committal, finding Seth Winder mentally “incompetent with a probability of recovery.”

Winder’s father, Rodney Winder, estranged from his son because of what he described as Seth’s “schizophrenia,” says that he tried unsuccessfully to get Seth committed for years because of his behavior.  His father related Seth’s obsession with knives, and his disturbing pattern of chopping up snakes, spreading the pieces on the lawn at his father’s house.

Michel Foucault, French 20th c. philosopher

Michel Foucault, the renowned French philosopher, was among the first to note the role madness plays in recent history.  In his works, Madness and Civilization, and History of Madness, Foucault makes the point that madness is a social construct reflecting each era’s notions of what is pathological.  What we call “sanity” may well be the sum of all of our societal madness.  If Seth Winder is proven to have cut Richard Hernandez to pieces, we are left to wonder what role the homophobia of church and society played in his actions.  Foucault suggests that social depravity is a perverse implantation.  As long as homophobia is part of the social fabric of American life, the line between “sane” killers of LGBT people and “insane” ones will remain blurred.

English madhouse, 18th c., by William Hogarth

To his father, Seth Winder’s madness is “bona fide,” as he told the press.  To friends and relatives of Richard Hernandez, his madness is crazy like a fox. Rudy Araiza, gay longtime friend of Hernandez, told John Wright of the Dallas Voice, “I honestly believe that he knew what he was doing, and now this is his way of not paying for his actions or serving time.  This guy is just buying himself some time.”

When will Seth Winder be competent to participate in his own defense and to stand trial?  Psychiatrists will have to make that determination to the satisfaction of a judge.  This case points up the symptoms of a society so ill that it may determine an individual delusional when he dismembers a gay man, but may go on to accept the everyday irrational hatred of LGBT people as moral and sane.  Until a final judgement is made on the mental capacity of Seth Winder, there is one thing both his father and Hernandez’s friends agree upon: he must remain behind bars [Thanks to Dallas Voice journalist John Wright for fine reporting on this story].

April 27, 2009 Posted by unfinishedlives | Decapitation and dismemberment, Evisceration, gay men, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino and Latina Americans, Law and Order, Texas, Torture and Mutilation | 27 Comments