Weasel of the Week: Ashleigh Wade

You're a 20-something African-American. You've convinced your boyfriend that you're pregnant with your first child. You see an old friend for the first time in what seems like forever, and she's 8 1/2 months pregnant. Rightfully, what you should be doing is wishing her well and praying for her.

Ashleigh Wade, on the other hand, killed her pregnant friend.

Wade had pretended she was pregnant, and had her boyfriend so snowed he didn't realize that the ultrasound pictures on Wade's Facebook page were phonier than a $4 bill. On Friday, she killed Angelikque Sutton, and stole the unborn fetus to pass it off as her own. We've seen this scenario before. While the tabloid media tries to paint Wade as being delusional, so trapped in her own web of lies, the truth is, and I can only speculate here, mind you, she was perhaps afraid her boyfriend would leave her for someone else. Seeing Sutton with child, and less than a month away from giving birth, then, made her jealous and desperate. Jealous because Sutton was soon going to be a first-time mom and she wasn't, and desperate because if it got out that she wasn't pregnant after all, Wade's elaborately created fantasy would crumble and fall apart. The boyfriend likely would have said goodbye, and Wade's parents would've turned on her for lying to them, too. Parents are like that, of course.

How many times have we seen this story unfold, both in the papers and in adaptations on, say Lifetime or on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit? In this writer's opinion, too many in the last decade alone. I shan't be surprised if Wade's lawyer tries to use the insanity defense, but that's the lazy man's way out.

When Wade was arrested Friday, she stuck to her lie, which made no sense, except that perhaps she wants the insanity defense. How much do you wanna bet there are also drugs in the equation?

Ashleigh Wade gets a set of Weasel ears, and, while in prison, we recommend that someone order a DVD of the Australian soap opera, Prisoner: Cell Block H. That should snap Wade back to reality.