From NewsOK:

EL RENO — The ex-convict accused of strangling his girlfriend and her four children is a fan of Insane Clown Posse, a rap/hip-hop duo known for profane lyrics about murder fantasies, necrophilia and violent acts.

They perform in concert as “wicked clowns,” wearing black and white clown makeup.

A line in one song, “Murda Cloak,” goes “I’m killing today to take this feeling away.”

The lyrics of another song, “Sleep Walker,” include the lines “Choke ’em. Kill ’em. And sleep right through the night.”

Josh Durcho, 25, is charged with five counts of first-degree murder in the deaths in El Reno. He listed ICP — short for Insane Clown Posse — as his only musical interest on the Web site MySpace.

On one arm he has tattooed the words “Wicked Clown’o.”

One criminology expert said violent lyrics can influence troubled young people who absorb themselves in the music.

“Would violent lyrics in and of itself push someone to violence? No,” said Kathleen Heide, a criminology professor at the University of South Florida and author of “Why Kids Kill Parents.”

“But if they … were angry … alienated … depressed … doing alcohol and drugs … have difficulty with feelings and they’re not successful with life, that absorption in negative themes … can provide the impetus,” she said.

Durcho was unemployed and has been in prison for marijuana.

Still sounds like the getting high all day was the driving factor, although the Juggalos do seem to make the crime pages these days. I’m always torn on the idea of judging people by what they listen to, mainly because as an Alice Cooper/Black Sabbath/Dio kind of guy I know what it’s like to have people claim I’m more likely to commit crimes because of my aesthetic tastes, but on the other hand I’ve been fairly open about the fact I’m not a Christian and my taste in music, movies and literature may be a product of my alternative religious views now but certainly were also at the heart of my beginning to question mainstream religion in the first place. Art, and the kind of art we feel speaks to us, is inextricably intertwined with our spiritual, emotional and moral selves.

In other words, it is disingenuous at best to claim you can’t judge a person by the art they like because art plays a role in our perception and interpretation of reality and isn’t just a product of it. But, at the same time I will say it’s unfair to claim the Juggalos are more violent than Skinheads, Gangstas or many other subcultures, including we old school metal heads. And we definitely can’t make the argument that Juggalos are more violent than the typical youth in England. But to the people attacked with battle axes or who had their kids terrified by clown painted kidnappers that’s a hollow argument.

Trench Reynolds nutshells it in this way:

Now do I think that ICP made him annihilate an entire family? No. However I do think that violent sociopaths like Durcho are drawn to the Juggalo lifestyle.

That’s true, just as some satanists like Sabbath. The question becomes, are Juggalos more violent than youth culture in general, or simply more flamboyant? In a frankly stunning recent essay Theodore Dalrymple wrote about the prophetic quality of The Clockwork Orange, both the movie and the original novel, which he claims rightly predicted what youth culture in England would actually become. Here in the states we have the same violent, misogynist nihilism in our youth that the English do. The Juggalo image and Insane Clown Posse reflect that truth, but they also perpetuate some of the nihilism, especially in the Juggalo disdain for the rest of us.

That disdain, for society and its standards, is the real problem.