Former Belle Fourche Mayor Todd Keller
He's in the Jailhouse now
I'm jaded as hell. And at 39 years of age, 18 of which I've spent involved in politics, it's not often I read something that physically repulses me. But this did it. From Rapidcityjournal.com:
Hopefully, a competent counselor will convince her that reuniting with someone who puts out lit matches on her tongue is a bad thing. And putting their children within 100 miles of someone capable of committing such brutality is worse.
I really didn't need to end my evening with this tale. It made me go check on my kids in bed one extra time, and say a prayer to myself that the next time he loses his temper his kids are nowhere around.
The arrest of former Belle Fourche Mayor Todd Keller might have saved his wife’s life, Judge John Bastian said at Tuesday afternoon’s sentencing at the Butte County Courthouse after about two hours of testimony.Go read it all here. As I think I mentioned at the time of the Mayor's arrest, I'm concerned that the focus is over the "help" that this sadist needs. But at least the judge is holding this jerk's feet to the fire and mandating that he pay for his wife's counseling.
Bastian said “nothing prepared me for what I read” in reports alleging Keller’s abuse of his wife Jill. “It was torture… it was gratuitous.”
The judge said that he had spent more time reading the record and documents in the case than in almost any other sentencing.
and...
Truth in the case, he said, probably was revealed best by 23 handwritten pages by Jill Keller “simply to document the abuse.”
He told Keller, “It was not her choice to have you arrested.”
Bastian said those pages showed that the arrest may have saved her life.
“I simply have never read anything like it,” he said.
He added that the record showed that Keller’s violence to his wife had increased in severity and frequency.
“I searched the entire record,” he said, and “found absolutely nothing” that would have indicated Keller’s wife had in any way triggered the violence.
“She simply endured and hoped she would live through the torture.”
His sentence, Bastian said, attempts to include factors of criminal deterrent, retribution, separation from society and rehabilitation.
He told Keller he would be turned over to the Department of Corrections for a seven-year term in the state penitentiary with five and a half years suspended. That would make Keller eligible for parole in nine months, he said.
Bastian also ordered Keller to pay for counseling for his wife and children, and recommended that Keller receive alcohol and anger management both in prison and on parole, that he take medication for mental illness and that he show no violent or threatening behavior.
Hopefully, a competent counselor will convince her that reuniting with someone who puts out lit matches on her tongue is a bad thing. And putting their children within 100 miles of someone capable of committing such brutality is worse.
I really didn't need to end my evening with this tale. It made me go check on my kids in bed one extra time, and say a prayer to myself that the next time he loses his temper his kids are nowhere around.
Comments
I guess I'll defer to the judge and pray that this guy turns his life around and doesn't reoffend upon release. Hopefully his wife will kick him to the curb. I shudder when I think of the things that the Keller children witnessed.
The sad fact is that many times these sadists are so obsessed they return and begin to reabuse their victim and the victim is so traumatized that she takes him back. Mr. Keller might be returning to the penitentiary in a few years with a murder conviction.