What in the HELL would make somebody think of this?

I'm reading John Douglas' book The Anatomy of Motive, you can find out more about that in a post on the book chamber if anybody's interested...anyway, he got into one chapter about how people blame the media for the crimes committed in society, and one brought up was the HiFi Murders.

If anybody's not familiar with this case, and until I read this book I'd never heard about it, these 2 19 year olds from the Air Force went to a HiFi store, took the people inside prisoner, loaded up a van full of equipment, forced their victims to swallow drain cleaner after telling them it was vodka with sleeping pills, because they saw that in Magnum Force and figured it was a quick, easy and clean way to kill somebody. Wrong, turns out it can take up to 12 hours to die from ingesting the shit. Anyway, one young woman was raped, and the victims were all shot. One of them only pretended to drink the drain cleaner, and since he didn't seem to be dying, even after one of the men shot him (but missed miraculously); it was decided that he should be killed by sticking a pen in his ear, and stomping their foot down on the end so it punctured his ear AS well as his throat, and STILL this man survived.

Now I sincerely hope I am NOT the only person wondering how the FUCK does a person come up with something like this? The other stuff I don't wonder so much about, but killing somebody by sticking a pen in their ear and ramming it through so it stabs them in the throat, who...wha...I'm sure I'll get my head bitten off for asking if this could possibly be a military thing, because how the hell would a regular member of society come up with a sick idea like that? Yeah I know, society is full of sick fucks with ideas of murder that most of us can't even begin to comprehend, but this was the first time I ever heard of THAT method.

well.. in the military AND in various karate, judo, martial arts-- you are trained to use ANYTHING to survive--- including a pen and a car key. I would imagine that someone who is trained in it would go for the throat though... his the jugular and he's dead!

If it was military--that guy would not have survived. Does I will not jump all over you... just simply state its "kill or be killed".. not stab in the ear and hope it stuns the guy enough so i can retreat

That's the odd thing though, yeah you use a pen or a key, the first place you're going to go for IS the throat, but this bastard did it backwards, he DID go for the throat, but that was from the INSIDE after he jammed the pen clear through the guy's ear. Who would ever come up with an idea like that?