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.