At her arraignment on a murder charge, "Girl in the News" was not as she appeared during her arrest, which followed an uneventful surrender when police surprised her at a friend's Northland apartment.

The cops said she was afraid that they would kill her and took her time talking to them from behind a locked door. Fear of mortality seems an odd reaction for an accused killer and female leader of a violent gang.

But even the atheist cries out to God when she thinks her number is up. Even the misogynist calls for his mommy when cornered. Yet, it wasn't expected of Shauntay L. Henderson, baby-faced and fresh to the FBI's Most Wanted List.

On her pimped-out MySpace site, Girl in the News, as she calls herself, is pictured in a hooded jacket. She holds what looks like a joint. It's a rebellious, street-tough gesture. She calls herself one "Bad (expletive deleted)," which sort of rhymes with Comcast witch. Another photo shows her looking girly while on the phone in an immaculate kitchen.

It is a sign of the times that those violently predisposed are taking advantage of the information superhighway. Al-Qaida terrorists use the Internet to publicize their misdeeds and amass support. So do made-in-America thugs who terrorize neighborhoods and seek to promote their exploits through Brave New World technology.

Girl gets lots of attention because it's considered rare to have a female head of a male-dominated gang. It isn't often that a girl goes from 12th Street and Vine to America's Most Wanted.

Girl in the News likes publicity. So did Bonnie Parker, who would assume a sultry pose for photos taken between armed bank robberies. She and her partner, Clyde Barrow, used newspapers to shove their crimes in the faces of sheriffs.

On Girl's MySpace site, there's a message likening her and a partner to "Bonnie and Claude." (Gangstas emphasize shooting skills, not spelling.) Actually, publicity surrounding crimes is where any similarity between Bonnie and Girl ends.

Bonnie was a gun-toting hillbilly who celebrated her crimes. Girl wants to be presumed innocent until found guilty. There could be more Hottentot Venus than hick to this story. Except Girl will be studied behind bars, not behind the walls of a museum.

Police thought Girl might have shaved her head to avoid recognition. Not so. When arrested, her hair looked freshly done, folks said. She wasn't trying to disguise herself. In no hurry to escape, she made a grooming pit stop.

By the time of her arraignment, the hair was taken down. At the jail, they take away hairpins, weave tracks and braids. So when Girl mugged for the cameras, shouting to reporters, "I'm innocent, man, I'm innocent," she looked like any other nappy-headed inmate processed through Jackson County corrections.

Girl is accused of gunning down DeAndre Parker, 20, on Sept. 2, while he sat in a truck with his girlfriend. Girl is charged with second-degree murder and armed criminal action related to gang-banging. Weighty charges for a girl about the size of Jada Pinkett Smith.

The interest expressed here isn't laudatory; it is anthropological. Girl is studied through the lens of Margaret Mead who said, "One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night." People are born. Killers and other monsters are made.

"Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited," Mead also said.

Rhonda Chriss Lokeman is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate. You can view her Creators column on national affairs Sundays on The Star's Web site, Kansascity.com. Today she writes on the Smithsonian scandal. Her Star column emphasizes more local and bistate issues and appears in this space.

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