It's a small town I live in, and sometimes things make no sense...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Every year when my mother came to Door County on vacation, she would buy an item, usually a piece of furniture, from Ida Bay, who ran the best antique store in the county, where every item was put on sale only after being restored to clean, working condition. Her shop was dust-free, sparkling and spotless with lots of pretty, colorful glassware in the windows.

Ida (“Mrs. Bay” to me) took a small, Shaker-style chair a local fisherman whittled for me as a young child, refinished it, and it now sits in the window at the Door County Museum as an example of folk furniture.

I used my first video camera to record some of Ms. Bay’s nicely-cluttered shop interior for posterity.

Ida Bay had a son, Denis, and I showed Ida’s home/shop high on the hill when it went up for sale after her death and when Denis put it on the market. It still hasn’t sold.

Denis had a son, Denis Jr., who married Michelle Wehausen and they lived in De Pere, near Green Bay. They had two children, Andrea, 15, and Daniel, 10.

Last Friday, Denis Jr. took a shotgun and killed both children, his wife and himself. The obits in today’s paper says they “died unexpectedly,” with no further details.

http://www.nbc26.com/news/local/138828744.html

2

Wow. You’re right; some things just make no sense. Condolences, Musicat. To the whole town.

3

Why do folks bent on suicide have to include family in the deal? It’s like that dreadful story in the current news, where the father blew up his house, with himiself and his two young sons inside.

“Sad” doesn’t begin to cover this story. I think of Dante’s Inferno and wish there was a special circle in Hell for those who murder their kids.

4

Josh Powell probably murdered his wife first, two years ago. He also took his money out of the bank to be sure no one got that either.
He, it seems, was not just a depressed man, who took his family with him into death. He was a selfish, evil man who injured his children with an axe before burning them and himself to death.

Musicat, I’m sorry for the shock and horror you must be feeling.

5

Yeah, I was shocked, as many were. I didn’t have a close, personal relationship with any of the deceased, but felt a small connection with the family going back for more than half a century. I’m sure more details will come to light, but right now I haven’t a clue why this happened.

6

I have nothing useful to add other than my condolences.

7

It seems to be the style nowadays, unlike Lizzie Borden’s time.

Take me along, take me along, if you love-a me, take me along with you…

8

Here in Kansas a man was recently sentenced to death for murdering his estranged wife, her grandmother, and two of his own daughters. His young son escaped, or was allowed to escape.
When the boy was supposed to testify his father tried to have him excluded, on the grounds that it would be too traumatic for the child. Sure, go ahead and shoot four people right in front of the kid, but be sensitive about his feelings later.

9

On 11 October, 1960, a local farmer shot his wife, shot his adult son, shot his animals, drained the water tank, chained and locked the gate to the farm, set the barns and house on fire, entered his house, then shot himself. No one survived.

Friends who had attended a card party at the farm the night before the murders told investigators everything seemed fine with the family. Investigators discovered no family discord, abuse, psychiatric disorder, financial problem, or other obvious reason for the farmer’s actions. :confused:

I am so sorry for the murdered people and send my condolences to those who knew and loved them, but sadly, while this sort of behavior is rare, it’s been going on for a long time.

10

Yes, it’s hard to extrapolate from rare instances to a trend.

About 25 years ago, an “animal rights zealot” put a shotgun to his mouth just before the sheriff arrived to remove the many animals from his shelter/farm, even tho he had treated them quite well and was not lacking in funds. He had exhausted his legal appeals and apparently felt that suicide was his last and only option.

I’m not saying there’s any parallel, nor am I saying it’s a common occurrence here, but it does appeal to the mind looking for common ground, if any.

11

There was a murder-suicide in my town a few years ago, and the obituary in the local paper made sure to list that the murderer was preceded in death by the estranged wife that he killed. :rolleyes:

12

Preceded, as in mere seconds? Interesting.

The most local paper, the Door County Advocate, comes out twice weekly, dated Saturday and Wednesday. Saturday would have been too soon for the Friday night event, but it is strangely silent on the following Wednesday, except for the obit page.

The local paper, when pressed, can get into print items less than 24 hours from newstand presentation, so the timeline isn’t enough to explain the near-total lack of coverage.

The Green Bay Gazette, however, which publishes 6 times a week, had a Tuesday column on the front page with pix of all the victims, including the alleged perpetrator, but limited detail.

It may be a rare case of a distant paper scooping a local. There are some strange things going on here, and I expect it will come out eventually. If not publicly, I’ll be grilling the local paper’s chief editor when I see him at the next County Board meeting.

(Both papers are owned by the same company, which deepens the mystery.)

13

I had it straight from the mouth of someone, who thankfully failed both halves of a murder suicide, that the motive for attempting to take her child out with her was that the world was so unbearable for her to live in that she didn’t want to leave her daughter behind to suffer in it. Attempting to explain that the child surely deserved to live her life and make up her own mind about that met with incomprehension. Parents seem to have difficulty separating their children from themselves.

14

Damn. I am sorry to hear it.

I don’t want to think about what the last few minutes were like for the murder victims.

15

The mystery deepens. Thinking there might be some news updates, I went to the most local news sources we have, the Door County Advocate (newspaper) and WBDK (radio station). I was surprised to find absolutely nothing on the WBDK web site, not even in their archives, beyond a simple obit notice.

The Advocate’s site also seemed to ignore the situation, preferring to spotlight other things like the local compost site that was closing temporarily and the airport was remodeling the pilot’s lounge.

Even stranger, since as I passed by the Moravian Church last night, where a memorial service was planned and attended by 200 people, I saw three large Green Bay news vans parked with their 75 ft monster antennas upraised. Apparently the distant news services think this is a major news item, since they rarely come to this county at all.

And the TV crews must have different ideas of what is news, as they ignored the compost site closing and the pilot’s lounge remodelling. :rolleyes:

I just talked to Bob Dohr, the news director of WBDK, who said they didn’t have the personnel to cover the Moravian Church last night. He also said that he didn’t think the story was all that important, since “everyone knew the circumstances already.”

So a news outlet doesn’t cover what everyone already knows? I wonder if that’s what they teach in journalism school.

The other radio station in town, WDOR, has nothing on their main page, either, preferring to talk about the girls’ basketball team and a recycling program. Even odder, since in one of the TV station’s snapshots I can see the only WDOR reporter at the Moravian Church, writing on his notepad, so I know he was there.

It makes me wonder. Does news get out of date this quickly? :confused:

16

Musicat, that is a sad and disturbing story indeed.

I can’t really see the “mystery” of lack of news coverage to be anything deeper than a small-town paper being reluctant to dwell on a sensational and tragic story. The Door County Advocate isn’t quite the New York Times. The editors are probably being mindful of how their paper reflects their community in a way a big-city publication would not. You can argue for or against such an attitude, but I don’t imagine it’s any more of a cover-up or conspiracy than that.

17

No, I’m not likely to be a conspiracy theorist. I just had an email conversation with the newspaper’s editor, who pointed out that if I looked very closely, on page 3 of Wednesday’s paper (it only comes out twice a week), I would find, in a sidebar, a mention of a planned memorial service.

The article devotes only a paragraph to the circumstances, first mentioned in paragraph 5 of 7, and no names are in the headline, which reads, “Memorial Service Planned…”

That may sound like enough coverage, but this is a paper which once had their lead story, on the entire front page, about a beloved cat who used to sit on the counter of a gift shop and died suddenly.

I guess everyone has their priorities, and if they had made it more prominent, they would might been accused of sensationalism.

I still feel it was buried and not likely to be found unless you looked for it diligently.

18

I’m thinking either they feel it “reflects badly” on the town or might make them less desirable to tourists (who wouldn’t see the local paper unless they were already there, but anyway…).

It kind of reminds me about the people who are inevitably interviewed by the TV stations when there’s a murder among family members in some small town/sleepy suburb and you get one or both of these sentiments:

  • “Now we’re locking our doors at night, we never did that before”
  • “I never thought this would happen here; you always hear of this in big cities”

:dubious: People can be murderous assholes in small towns too - there are just fewer people in your small town! And why are you locking your door at night because some guy on the other side of town killed his own family?

Meanwhile, a gift shop’s kitty is a slightly sad story that emphasizes the town’s “homey” feeling and shows where their “priorities” are.

19

I certainly agree with you on all points, Ferret Herder.

In contrast to the cute kitteh story, some years ago, in a story they probably would like to forget, the paper printed a swastika on the first page to illustrate a “news” story about contemporary (1970’s?) Nazis meeting in a secret, night ceremony on a beach on Rock Island, complete with beach fires and speeches.

The evidence? Somebody told them a story, “I saw them, right over there!”. No corroboration, no pictures, no other witnesses, no reason to believe that there ever was a chapter of modern Nazis for 200 miles, let alone in our county. And the swastika was a file photo – the only thing they could find to illustrate it.

Now that’s hard news.

20

My fiance designs newspapers - several, for one company. None of these papers ever have a crime story on the front page because that isn’t “positive news”. There is nothing at all unusual there.