Lots of bad circumstances contributed to this event.
1. Genetics- Adoption at birth - We should suspect there’s a strong chance that his birth mother / father were drug addicts and possibly incarcerated themselves. Very often the crazy gene or drug warped brain is being sown in the womb.
2. Adoption by older parents- Much more difficult for them to have the stamina and where with all to raise children in these times. They adopted these boys while in their fifties and neither parent had longevity.
3. No extended familial structure to provide support or a safety net. The parents were transplants from NY. No grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins to support them.
4. Dad died of a heart attack years ago - no father figure in the household. We presume there’s no uncles or athletic coaches in this boy’s life.
5. Unknown psychotrophic drugs in his system due to diagnosis which are genuine due to his antisocial horrible behavior.
6. Mom dies three months ago and that was likely is only thread of normalcy however wavering it was to support him.
NOTE: It was reported that Mom wanted to send the boys up North to live with a neighbor’s daughter sometime after the boys’ father had died. SHE COULD NOT DEAL WITH THEM.
And she was willing or desperate to send them away. There always has been lots of trouble with Nicolas. He is a deeply disturbed young man that has been quite abnormal for a very long time.
I have worked with numerous children like this, and can say with certainty that the system doesn’t work. Even when parents do everything possible to try to get help, they are never believed. They won’t even diagnose children as psychotic because we have no way to deal with them as a society. I know of parents who have been forced to take children home from mental health programs because the children were too dangerous to stay in a program—even though the kid was violent and threatening to kill their family.
These poor parents are emotional wrecks, and they are abused by the system that is supposed to help them. The vast majority of parents killed by their children are victims of adopted children who are known psychopaths. The kids are all on SSRIs, but are taught that there are no consequences to their actions. They have no ability to attach emotionally, and will kill a person with less emotion than you would swat a fly. Despite years of therapy and innumerable programs, they are insane and dangerous.
The parents are beaten down from every quarter and many are older and do not have the physical stamina to control the children. The divorce rate is huge, and the lack of support alienates them from peers. People are uncomfortable with real crazy and they can to get any relief. The children are time bombs, and yet when they explode, it’s a huge surprise. It’s the gun’s fault; it’s the parents; it’s Trump’s fault. Anything but the fact that we don’t want to deal with institutionalizing dangerous people because we are a caring society and never want to return to the evil movie days of “One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest.”
It was a great movie, but it has done more harm to our society than can be imagined. There are some people who are incapable of living in a civil society and they need to be maintained in facilities that are equipped to deal with them. Most are incurable and truly require lifelong care—real care—not some socially acceptable stepping stone to murder.