What's_on_Your__Bucket_List__

Kathryn Martin Martin 1 Miss Amanda Childress English 102 September 28, 2010 What’s on Your “Bucket List'” Splat! That was the only sound made after the screaming stopped when a thirty-seven year old skydiver’s parachute failed to open. She had plummeted to her death because of a jealous rival’s fury with her! Her parachute had been sabotaged! What a way to go. After reading this story, I had to delve further in to see exactly what this was all about. Some people have no regard for human life when they can become obsessed enough with jealousy over minor trivial things that they can commit the horrendous act of murder. According to Raf Casert of the Journal News, the two women involved knew each other very well and were close friends (par 1). They even shared the same first name! They also shared a passion for skydiving, and they both loved the same man. This kind of sounds like an advertisement for a motion picture doesn’t it' After researching, it probably could be! I certainly wouldn’t want something like this to happen to me! On November 18, 2006, Els Van Doren, an experienced skydiver with 2,300 jumps to her name, leapt out of a Cessna with Els Clottemans, Marcel Somers, and another skydiver to perform aerial maneuvers during their fall. Clottemans, however, said she had jumped a fraction too late to join the other three. When the sign was given to open the chutes, Van Doren struggled with hers and hurtled towards the ground. The helmet mounted camera that she had Martin 2 recorded her desperate attempt to open her reserve parachute (par 4). We even have it on film! Ms. Van Doren was a married mother of two, who spent most of her weekends away from her family, skydiving and hanging out with her boyfriend, Marcel Somers, at the skydiving club or at his house (Herald Sun par 3). A week before her death, Van Doren, Clottesman, and Somers all three stayed at Somers’ home with Clottesman sleeping on the sofa and the other two in an upstairs bedroom. This would seem fairly odd to me in the first place. It was not clear from the trial’s first day, which began on September 24th of this year, if Van Doren had known that Clottesman had also slept with Somers (par 11). Somers was supposed to be a dashing Dutchman, and was a member of the two ladies’ skydiving club in Zwartberg, Belgium (par 7). When Clottesman was left to sleep on the sofa, she allegedly became angry and cut Ms. Van Doren’s rip cord and tied a cloth around her reserve parachute which had been stored in a closet in Somers’ home (par 9). I mean, what was she doing there anyway' When she realized that her friend was already there with Somers, she should have just left, right' No, because in my opinion, she stayed to do what she has been accused of doing! I believe she sabotaged the parachute out of jealousy. Prior to this malicious act of murder, she had sent anonymous letters to Ms. Van Doren’s husband and to Somers himself. She had also tried to commit suicide only hours before she was to make a second statement to the police a month after Van Doren’s death (Casert par5). Now, doesn’t this tend to lean guilt toward her direction' The suicide attempt before questioning would indicate to me, if I was and investigator, that this woman had something to hide that she wasn’t very proud of. Martin 3 When something like this happens, I think about the family of the victim. Although their wife and mother were doing something that maybe she shouldn’t have been doing, there was no good reason that it should have ended up the way it did. They probably wondered if she had suffered, or did she know what was happening. We don’t have to ask. It was filmed. Try to deal with that as a family. How it made me sad for her children! The victim had even taken the younger accused more or less under her wing. She looked out for her. Face it, when people take up a hobby like skydiving that is no joking matter. It must be taken seriously. According to Casert, she fell from an altitude of 13,000 feet (4,500 meters). The video camera mounted on her helmet showed how she desperately looked up, hoping to see an open canopy. Seconds later, she crashed into the low shrubbery of a suburban garden in eastern Belgium and was killed instantly (par 6). This article truly disturbed me. I cannot imagine one of my “friends” doing something as diabolical as this to me. Why, we are not aware that the victim even knew that the accused had slept with this man. What if she hadn’t' I suppose that the accused must have thought that if she could get the victim out of the picture, so to speak, that she may have this man to herself. This is just plain stupid! The man was obviously a player. What was she thinking' Is she just that young and ignorant' The man knew what he was doing! I guess some men think that they must have all the cattle in the field. The accused was just gullible enough to believe that he could love “only her.” Ha Ha! In my opinion, this situation could have been totally avoided. The two women should have confided in each other their relationship with this man. Then, they would have known what Martin 4 they were both dealing with. I think that Somers led the younger accused on to believe that he truly had feelings for her just to get into her pants. I do not believe that there was any more to it. He was already sleeping with another man’s wife, which trust me, is not cool. I know. So, apparently he had little or no morals, and he certainly did not have any respect for either woman. This is why I think that the victim was unaware that he was cheating on her with the accused. Be that as it may, this “love triangle” needlessly led to high altitude murder. I think that she certainly had the opportunity and the knowledge to sabotage the victim’s parachute. For what other reason would she have stayed that night when she should have left' I sure hope that nothing to this magnitude ever happens to someone I know. I certainly know that skydiving will never be put on my “bucket list.” Martin 5 Works Cited Casert, Raf. “Prosecutors: Skydiving love triangle led to murder.” Journal News. N.p. 24 Sept. 2010. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. “Els Clottemans accused of cutting love rival’s ripcord.” Herald Sun. N.p. 25 April 2008. Web. 28 Sept. 2010.