Father Kills Children, Self

Oh, please spare me the melodrama. Men often get the shaft during a divorce -- the wife gets the kids, the house, and support money that apparently extends well into their 20s and includes college for the children and the man gets no options. It isn't difficult for me to imagine how a man might imaging a divorce as the destruction of his life and how this might lead an unstable man to destroy someone else's life, even if that means killing his own children. All you need to do is imagine him feeling trapped and destroyed with no way out and seeing his wife as the destroyer of his life. A more normal person would stop themselves short of killing their children and themselves. A slightly deranged person may have stopped at the pets (I've heard about that one before). And if being trapped in child support is enough to make a disturbed man who can see no other escape kill themselves, it doesn't take much imagination to see how it might drive a more deranged man to drag others along with him. Yeah, the line of thinking is sick. He wouldn't have killed his own children, pets, or himself if he wasn't.

I'm not excusing his behavior, any more than explaining that the perpetrators of child abuse were often the victims of child abuse, themselves, excuses their behavior. The sooner people get over the idea that explaining behavior is excusing it, the better off we'll all be.

If you'd prefer not to understand why deranged people act the way they do because such thoughts offend you as sick, and because you can't detach imagination or empathy from agreement, that's your problem. I hope you are happy saying, "I don't understand..." because you'll never understand their behavior that way. Of course people who "don't understand" also never see it coming and can never do anything to stop it.

I am not sure if I agree with the common belief in this area.

It was said that there was meth use by one or both parents, which could lead to the conclusion that the father thought he was sparing the children from the mother. However if this were the case the multiple stabbings in each child seems excessive and contrary. This was not an action to spare pain.

In my opinion I believe this was a spontanious burst of anger, something that night set him off. This was not directed to spare the children, or as a selfish act.

The pets were killed and decapitated, this factor baffles me. Perhaps this was his first attempt to purge the anger before moving to the children, or perhaps he felt that they were contributing factors to the anger.

Whatever the motives to the previously stated acts, the man killed himself by hanging. This not only expresses guilt, but also that the man truely wanted to die. Hanging suicides are reached after much mental time and deliberation.

All of these things however, lead me to a third conclusion. That his actions were set off by another factor that pushed him beyond his breaking point. He then resorted to a state where his only desire was to rid himself of all stressors. These included the pets, the children, then eventually his own life.

And I was simply explaining why I thought the man might be angry. The person I was responding to originally said that they didn't understand how someone could do this. I was explaining it. That you'd prefer to describe the motive in a more abstract way "he didn't get his way" (when the article suggests potentially more complex motives) along with your reaction that any deeper analysis sounds like a justification and is "sick" does, however, make me believe that you want to "understand" only in the most distant way, which is fine.

Nothing his wife did made her or her children deserve their fate. But if she better understood his mental state and the situation she was putting him into, she might have avoided this problem. I don't blame her for not avoiding it. It simply would have been better if she had.

As an analogy, if a well dressed person walks into a bad neighborhood, they don't deserve to get mugged. But if they better understood the danger they were placing themselves in, they migth be able to avoid getting mugged.

In Japan, to say "I understand" does not mean "I agree". This causes no end of trouble with American businessmen for whom understanding is agreement. But the one does not necessarily follow the other.

If I tell a young woman that it is a bad idea to dress provocatively and get drunk at a party with strangers, I'm not saying that if she gets raped that she deserves it but I am saying that her behavior could change the outcome. If that sort of warning offends, then so be it because that sort of warning will keep people out of your Emergency Room in the first place.

Pushing someone's buttons or wrecking their life is a good way to turn a marginally stable person into a violent maniac. Handle with care. And while it is possible that the wife simply made a dispassionate request for a divorce while he unemotionally stood by, I find that unlikely. Nothing the wife said could justify what he did but what the wife said and did may have changed the outcome. If you'd rather them show up in your Emergency Room and curse their evil husbands rather than offend them with any hint of a contribution to the outcome, that's fine. I'd rather have them avoid the Emergency Room -- or the morgue.

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