In a span of just a few odd days this week we have been frightfully reminded of both the fragility and the uniquely dark, cavernous depths of the human mind that will never be understood. Not by even the most gifted students of science nor by the most brilliant philosophers. The mind, it is a borderless jigsaw puzzle, and one that may seem so clear and simple and wonderfully fascinating to those who take it in and admire it. But when that puzzle extends beyond the line of sight of its admirers and falls into the trenches of the unknown, it becomes a new entity. It is a landlord, a slave owner, a puppeteer, and the human body becomes its tenant, slave, or puppet, unrecognizable and unbelievable.

Such has become the case for “Craigslist Killer” Philip Markoff and the “familicidal” maniac William Parente, two once-admired men, whose individual greatnesses were pawned off in cold blood. Whose minds morphed and swelled into unrecognizable and unbelievable entities.  So unrecognizable and so unbelievable that not even their loved ones, the most well-versed figures in the lives of these “All-American” men, could make the slightest bit of sense of their situations. Could look and say, “I saw this coming.” Could not wonder why.

We saw that in the words of Markoff’s fiancée Megan McAllister. In her assuredness of Markoff’s innocence and steadfastness to Markoff’s goodness. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly,” she said. She remarked about his inner-beauty.

And I wonder, has she accepted who he (allegedly) really is yet? I wonder, how do you do that? I wonder as she wonders.

We saw it in the faces of Parente’s friends. The next-door neighbor who told reporters about exchanging Christmas gifts with the Parente family, having barbeques, and watching the two girls grow up. You know, normal things. Evidence that this can’t be real. It just can’t be. Because, you know, we have this evidence. This evidence that William Parente is good.

The older couple who lived next door to my mother and stepfather about a decade ago were perhaps the two nicest next door neighbors I can recall having growing up. We washed our cars together. They brought food when my grandmother passed. They barbequed on their deck and smiled and waved and asked about me and my siblings when we happened to be barbequing too. They had a gorgeous Boxer and three kids, two of whom were married with good families of their own.

You know, evidence.

Because that evidence made it all the more shocking when I learned that their third child, a son, was the one in the news several years ago. The one on the front page of the Baltimore Sun. The one put to death by the state of Maryland for murder and rape.

But these people are good. Look, I have evidence. How could they have a son become so evil? How could they raise such a horrible person?

I ask these questions as Megan McAllister will probably always ask after Philip Markoff gets sent to prison likely for the majority of his life, if not its entirety. I ask as friends and family of the Parente family attempt to figure out how William, the once-beloved patriarch, fell victim, like Markoff, to the landlord, the slave owner, the puppeteer that was his mind.

In these terribly different yet sadly similar cases, we are indirectly and directly reminded that as good-natured as we may be and as well-wired as we seem, we are all so very fragile, susceptible to even the slightest cracks and chips at any given moment, ones that may shatter our very being apart. That may drag the mind into the unknown. That may mold those in your life you may know so perfectly well into the unrecognizable and unbelievable, so that you discover you don’t know who they really are, or were capable of becoming, all along.

We are packaged without warning labels, our contents so very delicate and flimsy, capable of being broken and spoiling.

I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just another guy trying to make sense of the senseless. I’m a disclaimer. A warning label. And I’m reminding you: Handle yourself, and each other, with care.