You think you know Joseph Randolph Mays. You know that he’s an ex-postal worker. You know that he’s been charged with stabbing to death his girlfriend Erika Peters and her two young boys on March 21. You know that he’s now another defendant awaiting trial at the D.C. Jail.

But Joseph Randolph Mays was much more. He was a poet, a spiritual counselor, and an Internet addict. On one of his more than six blogs and websites, he penned his own simple message to the world:

“My message to everyone in the world. Let’s do this and make our world a better place to live in.”

Mays believed he could make the world better by blogging. While working on my cover story about the murders, I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out Mays’ virtual life. I was stunned by the amount of blogs, spam-like business ventures, and personal writing he would post. He wrote tons and tons of almost unreadable material (i.e. hyping e-cards or flogging his people finder venture). In not one of the entries does he mention Erika Peters or her two sons. He’d only talk about the two-year-old daughter they had together.

But he did write a lot of poetry:

“Through this toilsome world,

Alas once and only once shall I pass.

If a kindness I may show,

If a good deed I may do,

to a suffering fellow man,

Let me do it while I can.

For it is plain,

I shall not pass this way again.”

I’m still mystified by him. How can I guy write that and do what he is alleged to have done?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.