I’d also pray that they have no idea how to plug their own or their parents’ names into google and find news reports about their father the murderer. It would be nice if they wouldn’t remember, but they’re going to have to be told someday.
I can’t imagine any more hell, because just having to survive after such an incident must be hell on earth for mom and child.
I’m sure there’s advantages to being buried in the back pages of the newspapers, like the family not having to relive the hell of death in the media spotlight for very long.
The point is, these cases happen all the time, and if the perpetrator is male, they get buried. Everyone knows Susan Smith’s name. Everyone know Andrea Yates’ name. But nobody knows the name of any of these guys. Sparing the victims the memory of the crime is most definitely not the reason the cases get buried on the back page.
This happened to a good friend of mine. Her three year old son was the vicitm of a murder-suicide by his father. Like posted above, everyone knows Susan Smith but few people know the names of any fathers.
The absolute worse thing I ever heard of a parent doing is Charles Rothenberg, who rented a motel room, poured kerosene on his sleeping son David, set him on fire, and then drove away. David survived and Charles was caught and served 7 years in prison. And tried to get visitation with his son! “David” by mother Marie Rothenbergn is a good if horrific book on the crime.
It was on the news this morning that the oldest boy has returned to his home with his mother. (THANK GOD) The other brother is in stable condition.
The police feel strongly that before the father drove the kids in the SUV that he had drug them with sleeping pills. The police have also figured out that he INTENTIONALLY had them in the drivers side to be hit.
I’m not sure it’s a determined attempt by the media to demonize women, but rather it’s the unusual circumstance. Male family annihilators are fairly common, as nutcase murderers go, but female annihilators get more press simply because they are rarer.
Similarly, if three people die in a traffic accident, they might get a few paragraphs on page twelve, but if three people die in a freak marshmallow drowning, now that’s news!
Wasn’t there a case recently where a man drove from the Northeast to the Midwest, dumping his children’s bodies somewhere along the way? I seem to remember something about duct tape crosses on their chests.
Eh, sorry, but I don’t buy that it’s just the variety factor. It’s kind of complicated, but this makes me think the same way I do when I see one of those commercials that supposedly poke fun at men for being inadequate about kids or housework. You know the ones I’m talking about: hubbie is left alone with the kids and chaos ensues. But there’s a second message buried, rather subtly, beneath that in a very passive aggressive way. “C’mon. ladies, give it up. Men will never, ever, ever do housework or childcare. All they have to do is pretend to be stupid about it, and not only that—then they get to bitch because you complain about it. Just give up and do the damned housework yourself.”
It’s like…have you ever read a report on domestic violence and noted the passive phrasing? “Violence against women.” “Abuse against women.” “Attacks on women.” Who’s causing these things? Are women being attacked by men or by nouns? Why the passive phrasing?
And when you start adding up numbers, and seeing the common thread in all these cases----a man who was scorned by a woman, but why do we only have a woman scorned s the stereotype?----you begin to wonder why nobody ever links them all together and starts doing something about it. One case is horrible and shocking. But one case a week–or more than that—is a social trend, and it’s being buried. How or why, I don’t know. But it’s interesting how often those little one-paragraph articles in the back of the newspaper hint at wife-beating but never actually state it. “They were having marital difficulties.”
YES ivyglass I remember hearing the story. I never heard the final investigation and wondered about that. The cross was his way of being religious abou the whole thing.
I just don’t know what would cause a person to snap and kill their children. I have a hard time with Munchausen syndrome by proxy as a legal defense. It just seems to me that I love my children with every fiber in my body. No matter how crazy life gets or out of control I feel that fiber is so deep, so woven into who I am that I could never forget it. It would somehow keep me grounded to the point that I could NOT kill them.
I’d bet if you looked at these cases, you wouldn’t find they’d snapped. I bet there’s domestic violence behind all these cases, or at least severely controlling behavior. Normal guys might bitch about their ex and call her names and put up a fight. Batterers are a different story. Look how many women get killed after they leave.
What gets me is that all these cases get reported as cases of individual tragedy. When women do it, there’s a subtle effect where they get linked to other, similar cases. Andrea Yates prompted discussions of post partum depression. Susan Smith prompted discussions of a bunch of things, but in both cases, they were portrayed as being part of a trend.
Charles Rothenberg? That sure was an unusual case. But I can’t recall where it was linked to other guys who lost custody or had control issues, and killed as a result.
This is very true. My husband was a batterer and his need for control was out of this world. He did some serious and awful things after we were divorced and landed himself in jail for a stint because of what he inflicted on me. I have an enjunction against him now until the last child in my home turns 18 but I fail to see how a piece of paper is going to save me. If he wants to get me…he will. Fortuntly for me is an alcoholic and is in the pits of his life and has left the state. I haven’t had any trouble for 7 years. But in the back of mind I think what if one day he gets snarky?
With certain types of psychosis, love is why DRIVES people to kill. "I love her so much that I can’t bear the thought of anything bad ever happening to her, so I will kill her and then myself so I know she will be with me for all eternity.
A friend of mine has been diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder. A couple of years ago, she heard voices telling her to kill her mother - the person she loves most on the planet. She just loved her so much that the voiced told her to kill her so that nothing bad could happen to her - disease, poverty, etc.
The sick fucks who kill their kids for REVENGE are obviously irredeemable. However, people can and do kill BECAUSE of their deep love for their victims, rather than IN SPITE of it.
Are you aware that many–if not most—of these marital murder/suicides are perpetrated by men with histories of domestic violence? Isabelle’s quote is about her children, which I can totally sympathize with, but your remarks seem to be kind of mixed, especially the concluding one, which seems rather general.
Men who kill their wives don’t do so because of love. They do so because if they can’t have her, nobody else can. She’s not someone they love; she’s someone they own.
His name was Manuel Gehring, and he killed his two children, Philip and Sarah, before taping crosses onto their chest and burying them somewhere along the turnpike. He didn’t even bother to note what state or city he was in while he did so, and the search for the children’s bodies has been extensive. They were here in town searching a couple weeks ago but couldn’t find them.
I think there is a bit of a distinction between men who do this and then kill themselves (in which case some kind of psychosis seems possible) and those who do it and then try to escape–which seems to me to be a pretty good indicator that it was an act of vengence and spite rather than an unavoidable compulsion. Of course, both scenarios are equally heartbreaking for the mothers and children involved, but there does seem to be a difference in motives.
Manuel Gehring, 44, has **told the police he shot his son and daughter after a July 4 fireworks show ** in Concord, drove to western Pennsylvania and bought a pickax and a shovel. He then drove on I-80 for three to four more hours to somewhere in Ohio where he dug graves for Sarah, 14, and Philip, 11, authorities said in court documents.
Gehring ended up in California, where he was arrested July 10. He pleaded **innocent ** last month to murder charges.
For crying out loud. HE TOLD THE POLICE HE DID IT! How can he get away with pleading INNOCENT? How can his attorney sleep at night KNOWING that he is fighting to get a guilty man off a conviction?!?!!
I really don’t see how it could not matter. Perhaps I misinterpreted your post. Each case is indeed a tragedy to all the individuals involved. But when it’s a tragedy that’s duplicated every week, every month, across the nation, it’s a criminal trend and refusing to link them together and take them seriously will only guarantee that these crimes continue to happen.
The Bible (new King James Version) has been interpretted to say that these “tragedys” are a sign of the end times. And that we are to expect worse before the coming of Christ.
A. One may in fact have confessed to a crime w/o having done it. (not claiming that’s true in this case, but it is a fact).
B. A person may have confessed to causing the death, while still they may be innocent of the particular crime being charged (again not claiming that’s true here, but for example, some one could confess to having accidentally poisoned some one, and yet be charged w/and innocent of say, deliberate murder)
C. In some jurisdictions, (not claiming this is true in this case) there is a possability of ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ type of defense, where the party may in fact have committed the act but not be guilty in the legal sense.
D. even if none of the above fit the situation, our system of jurisprudence doesn’t allow for a person to confess to a crime and therefore be denied a defense attorney, or trial. The fact that there is an attorney assigned and that a plea of ‘innocent’ has been entered doesnt’ at all mean that their attorney is ‘trying to get them off’ (per se), but (morelikely) will be negotiating some plea bargain to be entered into at a later time.
I don’t find this story appalling enough. I’m going to go carefully read through the available news pages to see if I can find something even more horrifying that happened to people I don’t know so I can get worked up about something that doesn’t affect my life and that I didn’t know about before I found the article. Wish me luck.
