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Dateline NBC ran their 2-hour episode last night on the Michael George murder trial. Michael George along with his current wife Renee own Comics World, a comic book shop in Windber, Pennsylvania. They also own and operate the annual Pittsburgh Comicon.
Michael George used to own a second Comics World store in nearby Scotland, Pennsylvania. The store still exists, but is now owned by a new owner and is in no way connected to Michael George. It’s located in the Chambersburg Mall nearby where I work and It’s where I buy my funny books every week.
I knew Michael George from when he owned the Comics World in Scotland. Not that we were friends or anything. I just knew who he was. I wasn’t buying my comics at Comics World back then, but I would stop in at the shop every time we visited the mall.
I watched the Dateline NBC episode last night. I didn’t really learn anything new. I’d been following the case very closely since word got out that Michael George was arrested for his first wife’s murder. I remember stopping in at the Comics World that afternoon. Everyone was in shock. I don’t think I’ve ever known someone who was arrested for murder and I don’t think anybody else in the store that day had either.
A lot of the people in the store that day had either worked for Michael and Renee George in the shop or at the yearly comic book convention in Pittsburgh.
Over on the Dateline NBC website, there is quite a lot of information to be had. They have posted an “express” episode that you can watch on your computer. They have posted an entire transcript for the whole 2-hour show. They have posted many of the actual crime scene photos taken where Barbara George was murdered.
One of the interesting things brought out in the show was being able to put a face on the various people that testified during the trial. I had been reading about the trial every day online. I was already familiar with the testimony.
And finally, the thing that I will take away from watching this program the most was what a wonderful and special person Barbara George was. If anyone didn’t deserve to be shot in the head, it was Barbara. That’s something that doesn’t come out as much when you are only reading about the case. There is just something more powerful about seeing photos of her smiling and laughing and being happy. I think the fact that her husband could be screwing around behind her back and then shack up with his mistress so quickly after her death speaks volumes about him. If someone — as Michael George had claimed — had murdered my wife and the mother of my two kids, I would hunt them down and make them wish they were never born. Michael George didn’t do that. No, he used her life insurance money to start a new life with his mistress.
It was very plain to see that Barbara George was good people. She deserved better. Much better.
Very few people deserve to get shot in the head. It’s just bad luck. Though such free access to firearms can’t help. Round here it’s mostly stabbings that wind up fatal, usually drug, gang or race related. It’s wierd as hell reading about someone you know in court. One guy shot a bloke over an argument about dog shit. In court he claimed he was defending his dog, though he shot the bloke a couple of hours after the whole incident. Bizarre. Dr Shipman (England’s most prolific serial killer with an estimated 250 kills) was tried not 2 minutes walk from where I live now.
What kind of evidence they got on him? With all that fancy dna and gunshot residue stuff it’s never been harder to get away with murder. A divorce world have been expensive but a whole lot easier that life imprisonment. Cold hearted mother deserves all he gets.