Check out this obituary carried in my old newspaper, the Seattle Times. It starts out routinely enough:

Stephen James BYRNE Steve, who lived in Edmonds, savored life…

We learn that Byrne loved “sailing, biking, cross country skiing, diving, hiking…an incredible mountain vista, how the leaves turned gold in the fall, a great bottle of wine and a wonderful meal with friends, a long ride around Lake Washington or up Washington Pass, completing the STP bike ride for the first time, and the second.”

And we learn of his family:

“More than anything in the world, Steve loved his daughters, Kelsey and Hayley. He was at every soccer game, every school performance, every important event in their lives. He taught them how to do all the things he loved - ride bicycles, go sea kayaking, ski, or simply find some good snow to play in. They read together, played games, went to movies, worked on school projects. He hiked halfway up Mount Rainier with them when they were very young, and all the way up on his own. He taught them by example to love the world, to be adventurous, and to be gentle.”

The obituary even includes a touching photo of Byrne and his daughters:

What the obituary, a paid death notice apparently penned by family members or friends of Byrne, does not reveal is that Byrne died after shooting himself…and after allegedly murdering the two beautiful young daughters he supposedly loved so much. Byrne was involved in a custody dispute with his ex-wife. Before he and his dead daughters were discovered by police last week, he sent out a suicide e-mail that included comments that he would take his own life and kill his daughters “and that he can’t be deterred,” according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

This apologist propaganda on behalf of a selfish, brutal, and evil alleged child killer is already having an effect on bleeding-heart liberals in the Pacific Northwest. Read this on an empty stomach. Meanwhile, some of Byrne’s friends are in such incurable denial (or are so inexcusably ignorant) that they posted the following pathetic remembrance in his online guestbook:

We’ll always remember the fun our families had water skiing together.

Duane & Marian Cheney (Bellevue, NE)

I’d like to tell you that the post is a hoax and that Duane and Marian Cheney of Bellevue, NE don’t exist. But they do.
I wonder if they, too, will continue to believe that Stephen Byrne “savored life” and loved his daughters “more than anything in the world?”

Byrne’s memorial service is on Friday. In lieu of flowers, perhaps someone should send his murdered daughters’ autopsy reports to the funeral home for all of Byrne’s mourners to see. Then, maybe, they will stop shedding tears for the wrong victim.

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