Story here (linked to the Seattle paper because its editors have disabled comments, and some of the posts on the local rag’s website make me want to take razor blades to my eyes).
I know I slept through parts of Dad Class, but I did pay attention enough to learn that one of a father’s paramount duties — perhaps the paramount duty — is to protect his offspring. And I’m sorry*, but I don’t care how many “stressors” you’re under: you do . . . not . . . blow . . . up . . . your . . . children!
And while I tend to be a skeptic about the afterlife (at least as it was taught to me back in 1950-something Catholic school), this sort of thing makes me wish that version were true. Something like an eternity of having his 'nads gnawed daily by rabid wolverines with red-hot teeth, only to regenerate like Prometheus’s liver for the next day’s assault.
One of the Seattle TV stations reported that the children had been talking about the camping trip where their mother went missing, saying “Mommy rode in the trunk” on the way there, and then “Mommy got lost.”
(They also used some weird euphemism for trying to interviewing people that made it sound like they were doing them a favor. I can’t remember what it was, but along the lines of “We tried to be there for the grieving family, but…” Creepy.)
Yeah, but apparently they died from smoke inhalation. After he hacked them, but before he blew them up. His dad is quite a piece of work too, must run in the family.
Of course, if it really did run in the family, what does that say about the two boys? Obviously, I don’t think they were doomed to repeat the pattern, but I wonder if the father didn’t believe in tainted blood or some such nonsense, killing them while they can still go to heaven instead of being cursed like him and his father.
Not that that would any way excuse it, just provide a possible explanation for the tragedy.
That thought briefly crossed my mind, but I really think the kids knew too much and were starting to talk. “Mommy’s in the trunk”. Then later, “Mommy’s gone”. It’s certainly a fucked up mess.
It’s possible maybe to wrap my mind around a mentally ill person killing their child(ren) to ‘save’ them. However, I just can’t see the manner in which he appears to have killed them (hit on head with hatchet, fire bombed the house) signifying anything but ownership of the kids and a desire to screw his in-laws.
You do wonder, or at least I do, how much effect growing up with his creepy pedophile father had to do with how he turned out. Probably a whole lot.
I read where one child drew a picture in school, unprompted, at the beginning of the year which showed their minivan with dad driving, boys in back seat & mom in trunk.
I don’t know the kid’s testimony could have led to his conviction. Memory, especially repressed/recovered memory, can be wildly inaccurate & it’s likely they’ve heard talk around them that could have influenced it.
(Of course, it’s quite likely they won’t show. Just in case they do, in the couple of hours since the announcement there have been at least two counter-demonstrations announced.)
I thought that didn’t matter, that they don’t have to have real people or even photographs to be child pornography (or just regular old adult pornography, for that matter). Wasn’t there a Florida case where a person with a sex offender past was found guilty of possessing child porn because he had drawn pictures of such himself?
Moreover, I don’t think that pornographic (or other types of) materials have to be actually illegal in order to justify recommendations of psychological evaluations or affect assessments of parental fitness.
Similarly, there’s nothing illegal about hearing voices in your head and saying you have to sleep lying under your bed because the voices tell you to, but it could definitely affect your psychological competence rating.
So did they show? I live in Topeka, where the rock they live under is located, and I know that most of the time, these days, they don’t show for most out of state picketings.