Placing Responsibility in the Judas Priest Shooting Case

Re Chuck Philips’ “Trial to Focus on Issue of Subliminal Messages in Rock” (July 16): I cannot believe anyone could rightly blame the music of Judas Priest or of anyone else in the self-inflicted shootings of two youths whose parents are now suing the band and CBS Records.

Blaming a rock song is, I’m sure, far easier for the parents than facing reality, but saying that Judas Priest made them do it is like blaming William Shakespeare if someone killed himself after reading the romantic double-suicide tale “Romeo and Juliet.”

I wonder how many people commit suicide after listening to Frank Sinatra or watching reruns of “Laverne and Shirley”?

KATHERINE NEU

Woodland Hills

Raymond Belknap, 17, killed himself with a shotgun blast in Reno in 1985. His friend James Vance, then 19, survived after shooting himself with the same firearm, but he died three years later of complications possibly associated with the incident.