For years now the "Precious Doe" case has been held up in the media as an example of why you can't afford to let your child out of your sight for one second. No telling how many kids were warned to avoid strangers because of it.

And now that the victim has been identified, police think her parents did it.

For years we've been told that most murderer/victim pairs are at least acquainted with each other. If anybody is ever going to try to inflict bodily injury on you, or to kill you, chances are it'll be someone you already know. Meanwhile, most of our decisions involving safety and security are made based on the idea that strangers are scary, unpredictable creatures, and the more different they are from us the more dangerous they are.

I don't know why this bothers me so much. I guess it goes along with a general theme about people believing things that aren't really true, needing to believe them when there's no real reason to. And I had my own need to point out that the case isn't playing out the way most people thought it would.