In this era of moral issues like “gay” cartoon characters and “wardrobe malfunctions,” the moral imperative “Thou shalt not kill” seems to have gotten lost. Maybe society should worry about murder more than homosexuality or nudity.

If we did, maybe 20-year-old Nicholas Swanson of Elgin would still be alive. Swanson tried to a break up a Feb. 12 brawl between 50 rival students and alumni from St. Charles North and Burlington Central High Schools. Someone in the mob killed Swanson by hitting him in the head with a beer bottle.

Bill Page, a columnist for the Kane County Chronicle, said that such groups of students drinking and getting into fights is a common occurrence. Where were their parents? Worrying about SpongeBob?

At least Swanson’s case got a lot of media attention. There were 449 murders in Chicago in 2004, and many of them received only a 10-second blurb on the evening news. But each of these 449 people had families and friends. There will be little children asking where mommy is. There will be parents and spouses who feel they no longer have a reason to live. A murderer’s act may wound scores of people hundreds of miles apart.

The damage caused by murder is shown by the murder of Kathryn-Mary Herbert. The 11-year-old was walking to her house in British Columbia, Canada on Sept. 24, 1975 when she disappeared. She was found two months later under a plywood sheet on the bank of the nearby Fraser River. Her skull had been fractured and her jaw broken.

Shari Greer, Kathryn-Mary’s mother, has been hurt by what she thinks is a badly-conducted murder investigation, run by the local police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Kathryn-Mary was buried with the clothing she was found in, per standard police procedure at the time. In 1975, no useful forensics tests could have been run on the clothing. However, modern DNA tests could have given valuable evidence, if the DNA had been saved. Also, a RCMP spokesperson admitted in 2003 that its forensic lab had lost two suspicious letters found in 1980.

The worse was yet to come. Butch, Greer’s eldest son, felt he had let his sister down. When these feelings became intolerable, the 21-year-old hanged himself in 1983.

Greer still feels hurt. British Columbia’s The Province quoted a tearful Greer as saying “It’s really hard to be a mother and know that your little girl was brutalized and nobody cares.”

Some people do care, even in another country. Kathy Giles, an NIU communication major and crime buff, has talked to everyone she knows about Greer’s plight. Giles is working with Unsolved Crimes International on a letter-writing campaign to the attorney general of British Columbia, requesting an inquiry into the investigation. Surprisingly, most of the letters so far are from Americans. You can find more information at www.geocities.com/unsolvedcrimesinternational.

All of us should remember Nicholas Swanson and Kathryn-Mary Herbert. If we do, maybe we will act to save innocent lives instead of worrying about trivialities.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.