Reaction to Article on Slaying of Laurie Myles

* As if the tragedy of losing a wife, mother and friend weren’t enough for the family and friends of Laurie Myles to bear, they will also have the memory of the false, mean-spirited article “Slain Mother ‘Loved the Lord Very Much’ ” (Sept. 17).

In what should have been a tribute to the innocent victim of a violent crime, readers were given negative personal information about the victim and her family that was more in keeping with the journalistic style of a supermarket tabloid.

Why on earth would a reader be interested in how much the family paid for their house? The other information detailing the family’s finances and Laurie Myles’ personal troubles have left me dumbfounded.

I think The Times owes the Myles family and the friends of Laurie Myles an apology.

JO ANN M. SMITH

North Hills

* If Laurie Myles had been the perpetrator, this kind of information might be relevant, but since she was the innocent victim of a robbery-related shooting, what possible purpose could be served by printing such information, except to add to the grief and trauma already being experienced by her family?

Two or three weeks ago, two articles appeared, on the same day, that profiled two women who had recently died--one beaten to death in Oakland and the other who succumbed to a drug overdose on the Westside. Similar background profiles were included for them, but in both cases were appropriate since in both cases the women’s lifestyles and personal choices were relevant to their deaths.

Laurie Myles’ purported lifestyle and personal choices had absolutely no bearing on her tragic death. The reporting of such facts is not only irrelevant but cruel.

LINDA S. HAMILTON

Calabasas

* I’m sure you all feel you have good reasons for including the supposed “dirty laundry” of this murdered woman in an article about her death. I don’t agree.

There is a sidebar listing a summary of follow-home crimes on the same page as the article. This implies that Laurie Myles had been the victim of such a crime. If she is indeed a victim, why would a respectable newspaper decide to present her to the reading public in a negative light at all?

Please stay true (if that’s possible anymore) to sound journalistic principles. I want at least one newspaper that I can still read.

DIANE K. NAISHTAT

Burbank