That list the LA Times published is lame. Lots of those guys were not really mass murderers. They were serial murderers. Big difference.
Without going into detail, my family was close to someone who did this very thing. A family, four kids. Gone forever because of an failing marriage. Dad, a completely "normal" supportive good father destroyed the world one night because he... I don't know why. Three years later, none of us knows why. There is no answer. Having been divorced, I understand his pain. But there is no answer for the rest of it.
People snap. Good people, with absolutely no sign of any mental illness can make a decision, grab a deer rifle and end the world. I've tried to find the answer for this for three years now. There isn't one. I stopped trying.
Don't judge any commenter here for their opinions until you have walked in their shoes. No one here did the unthinkable. There is no rational explanation or discussion that will explain it. And for some of you who think you have a handle on this, trust me, you don't.
From the outside, to anybody external to the family system, sure it looks like the person just snapped. The people on the inside will always tell you an entirely different story. People are very, very good at coming off as normal to all those who don't live with them or have sex with them or are parented by them.
After all, what goes into seeming normal is not very much. The beaten wife just wears long shirts and sunglasses. The high-functioning violent alcoholic drinks only at home on weekends where only his wife and kids will be the targets of his rage. The rapist has a gorgeous smile and a great sense of humor. The abused child gets good grades and is on the debating team. Coming off as normal is about concealing evidence of abnormality. That's pretty easy for everybody.
I recommend a book called The Gift of Fear. It talks about this very phenomenon of killings that seem random and senseless to everybody but the victims. There are always clues. One just needs to know what to look for and what to discount. Unfortunately, most laypeople do not have access to that information. Either because they haven't had prolonged exposure to such situations in the past or they do not listen to their intuition or they have no idea about the significance of seemingly minor details.
The parents, siblings, friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers of the killer are all people who will usually see the horror of the killer's true nature in one of two ways: if they too became an object of his/her control and domination. Or when it's too late and they hear that the killer has just finished a massacre.
@Wrapitup: I don't want to give the wrong impression that all violent offenders are easily identifiable to anyone outside the family system who is paying attention.
@Wrapitup: You are dead wrong on this. You almost couldn't be more wrong. In our case, this man displayed not a single violent tendency toward his wife, his children or his dog. This was a family I knew as well as is possible. I talked to his wife on the phone every few days. My daughter spent the night in that house 50 times. I didn't learn this shit by reading a book, I lived it. If we could identify the potential doers then we would. We can't! That's why every time it happens, it shocks again. No matter where. I will say this. There is a pattern, though not everyone who is in the pattern goes batshit crazy. This guy also had also been laid off from work. A marital separation was in the offing. But think about it. Almost no one who is having marital problems and has had to take a lower-paying job takes a deer rifle and shoots their kids in their beds and then blows is own head off in the kitchen. How do we ID the ones that will? That is the question. Again, my entire community (very small town where not much can be truly hidden) asked themselves that question for weeks, months after. If the answer could be found in a book, then it would never happen again. Not every wife beater kills and not every laid-off dad grabs a rifle. In my heart, I believe they would be alive today if there had not been a gun in the house. Live it and then form an opinion. You won't be able to. You will have more questions than you have now.
@Pinekatz: "Not every wife beater kills and not every laid-off dad grabs a rifle. In my heart, I believe they would be alive today if there had not been a gun in the house."
Yeah, you could be right.
As for the rest of what you said, I will not talk about any personal experiences on a public forum.
It is always in a violent offender's best interests to conceal his violent behavior from anyone outside his immediate circle of victims. If there was evidence of his temper, he'd lose his freedom and get locked up. That's why many violent abusers are great at acting like they're totally normal. And most people who know them are shocked when the abuser goes on a murderous rampage.
And it was not your job or your responsibility to realize that it was an act. No one in the community messed up. Unless anyone saw clear evidence of wrongdoing, it would have been impossible to do anything. In fact if anyone should have done something, it was the man's wife as the only adult in the family besides him who was witnessing and probably on the receiving end of his anger.
If anyone rereads my comments while not intoxicated ,it would show that I represented the children of the deceased mother while working out a custody arrangement with both families. The crime is even worse given the father's previous jail sentence for a similar crime during the end of his first marriage. Based upon my twenty years of legal practice and my own lovely divorce when the kids were four ( one of whom is multiply impaired disabled), I can tell you that these tragedies involve alot of problems in our system, including getting help or protection for the abused. Sometimes inlaws fuel entire divorces or interfered withthe marriage to begin with. These issues cross every ethnic and economic group. I defended drunkexpat because many people have these problems and some , for a variety of reasons act on them. His sense of humor as a writer is appropriate and you dont know dark humor unless your a mom at Children's hospital all the time. There is no justification for these problems but there are explanations and more prevention would be possible if the system was different. Just don't think that this couldn't happen in your neighborhood at any time.........
@sweetcaroline: You cannot be more right, unfortunately. It happened to one of my daughter's best friends. People, look across the street. Look at your next door neighbor. There is the calm friendly face of potential momentary insanity. They mow their lawns. They wave hello. The father in our nightmare was the coach of his son's baseball team.
Again, for those of you who think you can identify the monsters, you are straight up wrong.
@Seeräuber Jenny: You make a very good point. I don't know if I can say all, but all the mad persons gone postal I have read about have been men.
It's not that there are no female serial killers, and I don't mean the woman from 'Monster'. I don't have the science to prove it and am way too lazy to do so, but I think most of the female murderers use poison and sometimes plan for years. Whereas men, well, you know how it is - they get on the rag and go all hormonal.
A few years ago I had thoughts of giving my ex-bro in law payback for what he did to my sister and her kids. His parents and siblings were a big part of his take on life and love so they figured into it too.
I didn't do it. He died before last Christmas.
So moral of the story is people will usually get what they have coming to them, without our intervention.
Pardo & wife agreed to a final divorce settlement on Dec 18. She was to get $10K cash, keep her wedding ring, and keep the family dog. He hept his house.
The 8-year-old was a cousin of the ex-wife's kids, (a niece?) The 8-year-old's mother survived.
Pardo was found with $10K in cash and a plane ticket out of the country.
The reason that guys like this get pissed off is because the courts don't let them get their way. They're so used to bullying everyone into doing their bidding that when they can't do it in the courts they lose it. I think the "losing" party in any divorce agreement should be forced to undergo a psychological evolution. I'm sick of reading these stories.
@Mymoustache: Wrong! The Today show will feature her on Monday at the top of the 7 am hard news hour. And Ann Curry will fake-empathy-whisper probative questions like 'how did getting shot make you feel.' Yes, I hate that show, why do you ask?
Anyhoo, yes, thank God she lived. Let's hope that asshole didn't ruin Christmas permanently for her.
Currently going through a divorce myself, I can fully understand how people get to the point of violence. The courts drag out the process as long as possible where one party can literally hold the other hostage with no recourse. What the guy did is wrong, but seeing peoples lives screwed up so deeply through the process makes me wonder why it doesnt happen more often.
Ditto. My stbx was abusive and the Social Darwinism thing someone else mentioned is in full effect - as an abuser he "seems nice" and can turn on the charm, no problem - so the person who was abused (me) seems like a hysterical nutjob when I try to get people to know what he's really all about. I can't say that I didn't think about showing up at the Christmas Eve party he hosted with one of my former friends and his nasty skank girlfriend. Except I was just thinking about punching her in the face, kicking him in the balls, and throwing a drink on my former "friend". Not flamethrowers and guns... but I can understand it in a way, too.
@icantdrive55: Not to be a scold, but my Dad is described perfectly by you. With talk therapy, I understand him and myself better.
Imagining something is not the same as carrying out something. So, no, understanding is not the right word. Maybe you can identify with the feelings he felt (rage, frustration, etc.), but don't identify with the act.
@icantdrive55: 1)I hate to get servicey, but some counselling can help, and 2)living well is the best revenge. Your ex will strike again. You'll be around to say "I told you so". If I could tell you the number of friends of mine who struggled through divorces, with kids, and ended up comforting hub's NEXT wife (mother of the step-kids)through HER divorce...it'll take a while, but the world will get it. Justice moves slowly.
@SarahHeartburn: I think we agree and you're spot-on, except I think it's not a good idea for the ex to be involved in the next wife's affairs. The kids should be protected, but that's about it. Unless, that is what you're talking about.
12/27/08
12/27/08
12/26/08
Without going into detail, my family was close to someone who did this very thing. A family, four kids. Gone forever because of an failing marriage. Dad, a completely "normal" supportive good father destroyed the world one night because he... I don't know why. Three years later, none of us knows why. There is no answer. Having been divorced, I understand his pain. But there is no answer for the rest of it.
People snap. Good people, with absolutely no sign of any mental illness can make a decision, grab a deer rifle and end the world. I've tried to find the answer for this for three years now. There isn't one. I stopped trying.
Don't judge any commenter here for their opinions until you have walked in their shoes. No one here did the unthinkable. There is no rational explanation or discussion that will explain it. And for some of you who think you have a handle on this, trust me, you don't.
12/26/08
From the outside, to anybody external to the family system, sure it looks like the person just snapped. The people on the inside will always tell you an entirely different story. People are very, very good at coming off as normal to all those who don't live with them or have sex with them or are parented by them.
After all, what goes into seeming normal is not very much. The beaten wife just wears long shirts and sunglasses. The high-functioning violent alcoholic drinks only at home on weekends where only his wife and kids will be the targets of his rage. The rapist has a gorgeous smile and a great sense of humor. The abused child gets good grades and is on the debating team. Coming off as normal is about concealing evidence of abnormality. That's pretty easy for everybody.
I recommend a book called The Gift of Fear. It talks about this very phenomenon of killings that seem random and senseless to everybody but the victims. There are always clues. One just needs to know what to look for and what to discount. Unfortunately, most laypeople do not have access to that information. Either because they haven't had prolonged exposure to such situations in the past or they do not listen to their intuition or they have no idea about the significance of seemingly minor details.
The parents, siblings, friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers of the killer are all people who will usually see the horror of the killer's true nature in one of two ways: if they too became an object of his/her control and domination. Or when it's too late and they hear that the killer has just finished a massacre.
12/26/08
12/27/08
12/27/08
Yeah, you could be right.
As for the rest of what you said, I will not talk about any personal experiences on a public forum.
It is always in a violent offender's best interests to conceal his violent behavior from anyone outside his immediate circle of victims. If there was evidence of his temper, he'd lose his freedom and get locked up. That's why many violent abusers are great at acting like they're totally normal. And most people who know them are shocked when the abuser goes on a murderous rampage.
And it was not your job or your responsibility to realize that it was an act. No one in the community messed up. Unless anyone saw clear evidence of wrongdoing, it would have been impossible to do anything. In fact if anyone should have done something, it was the man's wife as the only adult in the family besides him who was witnessing and probably on the receiving end of his anger.
12/27/08
12/26/08
custody arrangement with both families. The crime is even worse given the father's previous jail sentence for a similar crime during the end of his first marriage.
Based upon my twenty years of legal practice and my own lovely divorce when the kids were four ( one of whom is multiply impaired disabled), I can tell you that these tragedies involve alot of problems in our system, including getting help or protection for the abused. Sometimes inlaws fuel entire divorces or interfered withthe marriage to begin with. These issues cross every ethnic and economic group.
I defended drunkexpat because many people have these problems and some , for a variety of reasons act on them. His sense of humor as a writer is appropriate and you dont know dark humor unless your a mom at Children's hospital all the time.
There is no justification for these problems but there are explanations and more prevention would be possible if the system was different.
Just don't think that this couldn't happen in your neighborhood at any time.........
12/26/08
Again, for those of you who think you can identify the monsters, you are straight up wrong.
12/26/08
12/26/08
(1) Sylvia.
(2 & 3) Her parents.
(4,5,6, 7) Her two brothers and their wives.
(8) One of her brothers' kids.
(9) Her sister.
She (Sylvia) is survived by (amazingly) her three kids and one sister, the mother of the eight-year-old girl who got shot in the face.
How to destroy a family in one hour or less, with maximum agony.
12/26/08
And I felt I needed to because it's too painful to think about without concentrating on the minutia.
12/26/08
12/26/08
It's not that there are no female serial killers, and I don't mean the woman from 'Monster'. I don't have the science to prove it and am way too lazy to do so, but I think most of the female murderers use poison and sometimes plan for years. Whereas men, well, you know how it is - they get on the rag and go all hormonal.
12/26/08
I didn't do it. He died before last Christmas.
So moral of the story is people will usually get what they have coming to them, without our intervention.
I'm still going to Hell.
12/26/08
12/26/08
12/26/08
Pardo & wife agreed to a final divorce settlement on Dec 18. She was to get $10K cash, keep her wedding ring, and keep the family dog. He hept his house.
The 8-year-old was a cousin of the ex-wife's kids, (a niece?) The 8-year-old's mother survived.
Pardo was found with $10K in cash and a plane ticket out of the country.
/there ya go..
12/26/08
Chickenshit mutherfucker.
12/26/08
Chickenshit mutherfucker. I'm going to steal that.
12/26/08
12/26/08
12/26/08
12/26/08
Why don't we throw in PMS as yet another thing that frees him of responsibility and call it a day seeing that this poor man is the real victim here?
Maybe that smug, vindictive 8 year old that answered the door made him do it. Talk about a last straw.
12/26/08
12/26/08
12/26/08
12/26/08
Anyhoo, yes, thank God she lived. Let's hope that asshole didn't ruin Christmas permanently for her.
12/26/08
12/26/08
12/26/08
12/26/08
12/26/08
12/26/08
Ditto. My stbx was abusive and the Social Darwinism thing someone else mentioned is in full effect - as an abuser he "seems nice" and can turn on the charm, no problem - so the person who was abused (me) seems like a hysterical nutjob when I try to get people to know what he's really all about. I can't say that I didn't think about showing up at the Christmas Eve party he hosted with one of my former friends and his nasty skank girlfriend. Except I was just thinking about punching her in the face, kicking him in the balls, and throwing a drink on my former "friend". Not flamethrowers and guns... but I can understand it in a way, too.
12/26/08
Imagining something is not the same as carrying out something. So, no, understanding is not the right word. Maybe you can identify with the feelings he felt (rage, frustration, etc.), but don't identify with the act.
12/26/08
12/26/08
Thanks for the earlier shout-out. xo.