Evil and Incompetency

The violent career of Scott Malsky
by Robert A. Waters

Scott Christopher Malsky is the monster you see in horror flicks.  Today, he sits in a Florida prison doing life.  He’s lucky he didn’t get the death penalty.

In July, 1993, Pauline Farrington lived on Ednor Street in Port Charlotte.  Seventy-nine-years-old, she’d been a widow for many years.  After no one heard from her for several days, a neighbor checked her home.  Farrington lay in her bedroom, stone-dead.  Police determined that she’d been raped, stabbed, and strangled to death. 

Malsky, 17, quickly became the prime suspect.  He lived a few doors down from the victim, and already had a long history of deviancy and violence.  At the time, however, investigators were unable to conclusively link their suspect to the murder.

Malsky left Florida and headed back to his home state of Massachusetts.  In New Bedford, two prostitutes claimed he raped them.  In two separate trials, Malsky was acquitted.  A prosecutor implied that the juries did not believe the victims because of their “occupations.”

After his acquittals, Malsky split Massachusetts, ending up back in Florida.  A walking time-bomb, it didn’t take him long to explode once again.  He abducted fourteen-year-old Jennifer Wolfgang from Punta Gorda.  Beating her with a baseball bat, he raped her, stabbed her 40 times, dumped gasoline on her, and set her on fire, leaving her for dead in a Florida swamp.  Eighty hours later, Wolfgang emerged on a rural road where she was rescued by a passing motorist.  Despite numerous injuries, the teen survived and identified Malsky as her attacker.

This time, the much-tattooed suspect would not escape punishment.  His victim testified against him and Malsky received 25 years in prison. 

In 2003, while the rapist was serving time, cops tested evidence found at the scene of the Farrington homicide. DNA matched Malsky.  He admitted killing the elderly widow and plea bargained a sentence of life in prison without parole.

A few months later, residents of south Florida were shocked to read that Malsky would be eligible for parole after 25 years. 

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that “the fatal stabbing of Pauline P. Farrington happened in 1993, two years before the passage of a state law that denies parole to criminals sentenced to life imprisonment.  Malsky's prison sentence, the state discovered, should have been guided by pre-1995 statutes.  Life prisoners then were granted eligibility for parole after serving at least 25 years of their sentences.  In 1995, state lawmakers passed the Stop Turning Out Prisoners legislation, which required that inmates serve at least 85 percent of their sentences -- effectively ending ‘early release.’ Prisoners given life terms would get no parole.”

It’s frightening to realize that Malsky might actually get out of prison someday.

And what’s almost as frightening is the fact that the bureaucrats we hire to save us from such people are incompetent.