Posted on 03/28/2002 10:48:27 AM PST by ValerieUSA
Edited on 04/12/2004 5:34:01 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
MERCED -- Melanie Willis fought with her former stepfather in the hallway of her home before he shot her to death.
"She put up a heroic and valiant fight against him," Merced County Sheriff's Cmdr. Bill Blake said Wednesday. He referred to physical evidence at the shooting scene and on Melanie's body, but he would not elaborate.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Man shot daughter, stepchildren out of revenge for failed marriage
MERCED, Calif. -- Rambling letters written by a man who killed his daughter, three stepchildren and himself depict a desperate man bent on revenge over a failed marriage, authorities said Wednesday.
The writings were found in the apartment of the former sheriff's deputy and at the house of his ex-wife, where the five victims were found dead of gunshot wounds Tuesday. John Hogan wrote that he had nothing to live for and that he wanted to be buried with his 5-year-old daughter, who was found lying in her father's arms, said Merced Sheriff's Sgt. Ken Thurman.
"I want to be with her forever," Hogan wrote, according to Thurman. "She was a blessing from God."
Hogan also allegedly wrote that he blamed the stepchildren for the divorce from Christine McFadden. Melanie, 17; Stanley, 15; and Stuart, 14, were McFadden's children from a previous marriage.
Hogan had recently lost his job in law enforcement because of a disability, his marriage collapsed and he was about to be evicted from his town house.
"He was upset and disgruntled," said sheriff's commander Mark Pazin. "He was hoping there was going to be a reconciliation in their relationship. Evidently he realized that it was not going to happen."
The two were married in 1995. Hogan knew his ex-wife's routine, and is believed to have entered the house through a garage door that was unlocked while she was out walking with a neighbor, Thurman said.
Inside the house, Hogan called a friend and former colleague who still works as a deputy at the Santa Clara sheriff's office, and left a message saying he was financially and emotionally bankrupt and that "it was over."
Thurman said he thinks the call was made after Hogan killed the children. "The tone and emotion in his voice sounded very desperate," Thurman said. "He was already talking in the past tense."
Couldn't have possibly been a satirical reaction to the many people blaming Russell Yates for the deaths of his kids? I didn't see the posts, but it is a fact that a mentally ill woman who kills her kids receives support from a wide cross-section, while a mentally man who kills his kids receives only condemnation.
I think both should be condemned equally.
Not even close. But even if we ignored posting guideline regarding obscenity there are no words you, or I, or the most feculently tongued orator could use to accurately describe this alleged human.
Remind me to bookmark this post, you do have a way with words...
I'm a little hesitant, but I'm going to give you up anyway as a nominee for QOD.
This guy was just out to destroy people he felt destroyed his own chance of happiness. He had no delusional thinking. He meant to cause as much heartache as he could.
If he had delusions (e.g, that the kids were CIA agent vampires sent by the devil to destroy him) his situation would be on par with Yates'.
Men who wipe out their families like this usually are just angry, bitter violent men, not diseased. Some women who do this are likewise, bitter Medea types. I don't mean to say there aren't.
Men however, never have endocrine-triggered mental illness related to pregnancy - that accounts for the discrepancy you perceive.
Kudos, you are a very consistent person, which isn't true of a lot of us. Though Rusty Yates is a world-class jerk, Andrea was the killer. And this man was another miserable child-killer.
Does it really matter that much what triggers the psychosis? Men have mental challenges, such as the pressure to provide adequately for their families, that are present for women to a much lesser degree. It is also probable that most mental illnesses in men, as in women, are caused by chemical and hormonal imbalances.
No offense, but to put female mental illness into a special category that makes the perpetrator somehow less culpable does not seem to me to be justified by the medical facts.
Women have challenges men don't face. And men have challenges women don't face. I fail to see why one set of challenges should be exalted over the other as being more difficult to overcome. I think we have gotten so used to doing so that we don't always even realize when we're doing it.
No argument that this guy was a serious *sshole. Too bad he didn't get confused and kill himself first!
I dunno... Judge for yourself-- "This woman, however, has children with different last names, and she has a last name different from any of the kids. My bet is that she is a narcissistic, man-user, NOW member, who marries them, has kids with them, decides she's "not happy" in the marriage (and of course it MUST be all his fault!), divorces him, soaks him for everything she can get, talks him down to his children, then remarries and starts the whole agenda over again."
I am challenging the double standard. Also the assumption that a female's life is inherently far more stressful than a male's and that therefore she should not be judged by the same rules.
Motive and ability to perceive reality matter to me.
If this guy were schizophrenic and delusional, then we would be talking a similar situation. But he was just aiming to cause pain to folks he felt hurt him.
as a matter of biology, men are never subject to certain triggers of mental illness that women are subject to. Men can't get pregnant. That accounts for the discrepancy you perceive. No man is ever going to have his brain chemistry screwed up, or his pre-existing mental condition exacerbated by the endocrine changes of pregnancy.
Women who have psychosis triggered by pregnancy are more likely to have kids. Mothers usually spend a great deal of their time with their young infants and children and unfortuneately proximity and isolation make the children the most likely, and obviously vulnerable target of any violent delusions the mother acts upon.
The targets of delusional men who become violent are rather more spread out.
I have great empathy for any woman overwhelmed by being a mother, right up to the point where she harms one of her kids.
I also have empathy for men equally overwhelmed by the stresses they face, right up to the point where they hurt somebody.
BTW, what is the evidence this particular guy wasn't mentally ill? It is a little difficult to examine his mental state at the moment, since it's spread over about ten square feet of the ceiling.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.