Posted on 08/28/2015 12:07:58 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
Before Vester Lee Flanagan II shot and killed Roanoke, VA journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward on live television and then committed suicide, the public knew him as Bryce Williams, a reporter at station WDBJ who covered local news stories. In the days that followed the double murder, alleged details about his troubling past have emerged, particularly surrounding his late mother.
According to court papers obtained by the New York Daily News, Flanagan’s parents Betty Flanagan and Vester Lee Flanagan Sr. divorced when Vester Lee was 8-years-old. And Flanagan Sr., 76, had filed a restraining order against his wife, a former teacher, who he claimed was “extremely menacing and threatening” to his son and two daughters, Valerie, 10, and Vicki, 9. “She has also repeatedly threatened my life, at least on one occasion threatening to shoot me in my sleep, and the children have heard these threats and are understandably upset,” read the documents.
Flanagan Sr., who was granted the divorce in 1982, along with physical custody of his three children, also wrote, “She has, for example, threatened the lives and safety of our children as a method of attempting to keep me from leaving the house to go to work. At other times the respondent (Betty) is calm, rational, and charming, but the children and I are unable to anticipate or control these outbursts or threats of violence.” He also added that Betty “threatened the children with a brush and a belt, and had I not removed these weapons from her hands, I am certain she would have used them on the children.”
The court granted the father physical custody of his children. Betty, meanwhile, was ordered to move out of the family home, stay away from her estranged husband’s workplace, and to not “attack, strike, threaten or otherwise disturb the peace of the three minor children.”
Vester Lee was also perceived as a difficult employee, and a childhood friend told People that he “wanted to be famous.”
According to Fran Walfish, a Beverly Hills–based psychotherapist who has never met Vester Lee, while volatile eruptions in his childhood home may have escalated once the parents began having marital troubles, it’s likely that they were ongoing during the gunman’s entire life.
What’s more, she speculates, the gunman may have had a unique connection with his mother. “All children subconsciously observe or feel who holds the power in their family of origin, and identify with that person because to a child, power means getting what they want,” Walfish tells Yahoo Parenting. “However, aggression and violence is a distorted perception of power because the one who is raging doesn’t have control.” She adds that the dynamic might have been changed by raising self-awareness, or through intervention with therapy.
And while it’s unknown how Betty treated her son apart from his sisters, his decision to murder two people on live television — and record the act — may have reflected a desire to be heard or recognized after a childhood of neglect. “That’s certainly possible,” says Walfish. “And, by committing suicide, it also shows that he couldn’t face the consequences of what he did.”
Did Workplace Racism and the Charleston Massacre Push Vester Lee Flanagan Over the Edge?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3330151/posts
but..but.. he was about to turn his life around. Not.
Vester was a fag who wasn’t getting the attention he thought he deserved.
Yet another lame attempt to divert blame from the killer: “It’s not his fault; he had a troubled childhood”. “It’s not his fault; it’s just too easy to buy a gun”.
And on and on and...
I’ll bet he was on his way to college and was a “really good boy”.
Eff you, Yahoo Liberal Propaganda.
Isn’t an “overbearing mother” deemed to be one of the factors contributing to a same-sex attraction?
That explains the faggotry. He saw women as something to avoid.
Thanks for your erudite posting sitting directly above mine, saying the same thing, while successfully making me look uncouth.
She probably walked in on him when he was alone with a copy of Glamour Magazine. It was so traumatic he changes teams.
"88 children murdered by guns every day!" Accompanying Yahoo lie-fest about guns
It does not appear he was neglected by his father.
88 children a day comes to 32,120 children per year. Not even remotely accurate.
He was often referred to as a “Gentle Giant” gee just like Michael Brown
So if I get this right, this young man had an all-powerful mother figure and (coincidentally of course) grew up to be gay. Wow. Never heard that one before.
According to Freud it was one of the top indicators of male homosexuality....now scrubbed from most textbooks.
Hmmm... you mean like millions of other moms since the founding of the republic?
“He was often referred to as a ‘Gentle Giant’ gee just like Michael Brown”
And like Jesse Matthew, the man accused of abducting and murdering University of Virginia student Hannah Graham last year.
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