At a long-ago gathering of the Wyoming Press Association, a veteran photographer presenting a slide show of his work clicked to a black-and-white close-up of a handsome, middle-aged man laughing so hard that his eyes were slitted shut.
The photographer remained silent for a few seconds as the audience took in the elegantly composed shot and tried to place the oddly familiar subject.
Was it some actor? A recently retired athlete?
It was Ted Bundy, who the photographer had spent a few minutes with during one of the serial killer's endless appeals.
We all felt the chill. For those few wondering seconds, we had known what must have been going through the minds of many of Bundy's female victims when he approached them, often feigning some sort of injury to gain their sympathy: Who's this charming devil?
Compared to that image, the photo of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev used on the cover of the new issue of Rolling Stone is almost gawky, as are most "selfie" shots that litter social media.
Tsarnaev looks vague and unformed, and more than a little stoned — not surprising considering the volume of weed he smoked through his teenage years, according to the former friends interviewed by the writer Janet Reitman.
Of course, few people will see the inside of the Aug. 2 edition of Rolling Stone. I went looking for it on Friday, the day it was supposed to go on shelves, at a few gas-'n'-go stores on my way to work, but found only lingering copies of the previous issue with Johnny Depp as Tonto from "The Lone Ranger" (a bomb of a far less lethal kind). Surrounding Depp on the racks were multiple Kim Kardashians, Kate Middletons and enough Hugh Jackmans to make you wonder if he had been elected king of the world.
Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid and Kmart have refused to stock the magazine. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said the cover was "out of taste," whatever that means. Boston Mayor Tom Menino said it "reaffirms a terrible message that destruction gains fame for killers and their 'causes.'"
It's unclear if Menino sent a similar scolding to The New York Times when it used the same photo, large and above the fold, to accompany a profile of the young terrorist two months ago, or more recently to the Boston media outlets that have devoted wall-to-wall coverage to the trial of mobster Whitey Bulger, whose reign of terror — including gun-running for the Irish Republican Army — was more localized but lasted longer, in part due to the assistance of the FBI agents who used him as an informant.
Most of these critics seem to be overlooking the cover's large headline, "The BOMBER," and smaller headline: "How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster."
It's a sure bet that few of them have read Reitman's article, a solid and exhaustive portrait of a confused young man who fit the classic modern terrorist profile: suspended between the ancient grudges and dimly understood ideologies of his native land and the often confusing jumble of immigrant life on the lower rungs of urban America.
Reitman doesn't have all the answers, but she talks to the young people who were Tsarnaev's friends before he was apparently sucked into the deeper resentments of his older brother Tamarlan, as well experts in terrorist pathology.
She doesn't let the younger man off the hook: Plenty of young immigrants with malignant older siblings don't commit mass murder. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev chose his fate and, if convicted, richly deserves to spend the rest of his life in a box.
Many of Rolling Stone's critics have asked why there wasn't more of a focus on the victims of the bombing — a good point about the media in general, but not a fair indictment of the magazine in particular.
We honor the victims of any kind of crime first by bringing the guilty to justice, then by supporting the survivors' physical and spiritual recovery. But in the long run, we show them the highest honor by working to make them the last victims of a particular type of crime. And like it or not, that means trying to understand the perpetrators.
As a sort of off-the-reservation corrective action, a Massachusetts State Police photographer outraged by the Rolling Stone cover leaked a sheaf of photos from the April 19 manhunt that ended with the younger Tsarnaev captured and his older brother dead.
The most dramatic image from the set, which was handed to Boston Magazine, shows a wounded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev emerging from the covered boat where he was held at bay for hours.
I understand the officer's intent to show the heroism of law enforcement on that day, but the truth of the matter is that this shot is much more likely to earn the young terrorist sympathy in certain circles: There he is in baggy logo sweatshirt, a swipe of blood across his face, eyes downcast with one bloody hand held up as if to ward off the sniper's red laser dot on his forehead.
He looks more pathetic than satanic, more drowned rat than rabid dog.
But looks can be deceiving.
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619