The names of Terry Aultman and Brenda Aultman are not well known, but they should be, more so than that of George Floyd.

George Floyd was a repeat offender with a long rap sheet who was resisting arrest at the time of his death.  He did not deserve to die, but unlike the Aultmans, he was not just an innocent bystander.

George Floyd died while being restrained by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter, and later pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating Floyd's constitutional rights.  At the time of his death, Floyd was suspected of having passed a counterfeit $20 bill, a misdemeanor in the state of Minnesota.

According to reports, the Aultmans were peacefully riding their bicycles home from a Biker Week event when they were stabbed repeatedly, had their throats cut, and were left on the street to die.  They were an older couple, apparently without criminal records, who had moved to Daytona Beach just six months before to enjoy their retirement.

The suspect in the Aultman murders is Jean R. Macean, a 32-year-old black man with a criminal record of drug-related and driving offenses who was filmed walking down the street at the time the Aultmans were killed.

According to Daytona Beach Police chief Jakari Young, Macean has now confessed to the double-homicide.  He is "the man responsible for murders of Brenda Aultman and Terry Aultman."  Macean, who was captured in the Orlando area, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.  Unlike his victims, aged 48 and 55, Macean is an extremely large and muscular young man.  He certainly had the means to carry out these horrific murders.

The motive in this case remains unknown or unreported.  It may turn out that the crime involved a black man who, on a whim, simply chose to kill two defenseless older white people.  If this is the case, will the courts decide to try the perpetrator on hate crime charges as well as first-degree murder?  Chief Young was spot-on when he said the murders were "a reminder of just the evil that exists in our society today." 

The Aultman murders were truly horrific — "one of the most vicious and gruesome incidents that I've witnessed in my 20 years," said Chief Young.  That being the case, why have these murders not aroused the same level — or a greater level — of reaction that the George Floyd murder did?  The murders have been covered extensively on local news channels in Florida and on some websites, but in a search of broadcast and published reports, I have found zero coverage on the national mainstream news channels, except on Fox news and in the N.Y. Post, which to its credit has run full-length reports.  Why have we not seen the same demonstrations, riots, media accounts, and outpouring of grief that accompanied the death of George Floyd?  

The only reason, I believe, is that the Aultmans were two middle-class whites, while Floyd was a black man who died while resisting arrest at the hands of white police officers.  Or, to put it in more basic terms, the Aultmans were white, and Floyd was black.

Left this way, two horrendous murders will remain entirely unknown to the nation as a whole, and the Aultmans will quickly be forgotten, except to those who knew them.

This is as the national media want it to be.  The woke narrative is that blacks are frequent victims of whites, but whites can never be considered victims because of their inherent privilege and power.  This storyline is utterly untrue, since young black men commit murder at ten times the rate of young white males.  More than twice as many whites are murdered by blacks as are blacks killed by whites.  And still the mainstream media refuse to cover it.

The only way to address this evil is by recognizing it for what it is.  Most murders, I believe, could be prevented, and the national media bear a large part of the responsibility that they are not.  Offenders must be incarcerated for a violent crime with long sentences at their first conviction.  Gangs must be broken up, and drug-related offenses taken seriously — not dismissed as Jean Macean's were.  There need to be more police patrolling the streets and with more latitude to detain and question suspicious-looking individuals.

Above all, perhaps, the public needs accurate reporting so it can defend itself.  Honest reporting would make clear that while most blacks in America are decent, hardworking individuals, a sizable number  are criminals, and many of these are violent criminals.  Armed with this information, the public can take precautions — and it will be more inclined to pressure its representatives to increase funding for police.

Terry and Brenda Aultman, more so than George Floyd, were the victims of a monstrous injustice, and they, and what they represent as white victims, should be known across the country.  Given the bias and censorship that exist in the national news media, it is unlikely that their case will be covered.  Even now, a couple of weeks after their deaths, there is no outcry in the media, no marching in the streets, and little interest in the man responsible.

When cases like that of the Aultmans are censored into oblivion, the public has no means of understanding who is actually most responsible for murder in America.  As a result, homicide rates remain high, and prosecutors get away with awarding light sentences.

For once, maybe the national media could play fair and report honestly about a black-on-white murder, but they won't.  The murders were "long ago" in news time, the perpetrator has apparently confessed, and all that remains is the process of accepting a plea and sentencing.  The media have already buried this story, not that they were ever going to report it.

Everyone in America knows the name of George Floyd.  How many will remember Terry and Brenda Aultman?

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture, most recently Heartland of the Imagination (2011).

Image: Lorie Shaull via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.