The Fallout

Until you have been here there is no way to ever believe what a determination of murder/suicide can do to a family.

Like with any tragedy of course - it sends you reeling.  I had not even absorbed the fact that my child was gone when I was hit like lightening with my grand baby is also gone. Then there is yet more --my daughter-in-law is also gone.  Three members of my family at one time in one split second - my life has been decimated.  Then before I could even wrap my head around this god-awful truth someone somewhere tells me they think it looks like suicide.  Suicide? That doesn't make sense.  I don't remember much from that day.  Bits and pieces really.  But I clearly remember my first thoughts when I hear the word "suicide" I thought "well that doesn't make sense there were three of them and then --and I may even have said it out loud -  what difference does that make anyway? They are gone"

Then as if that freight train was hit by a blinding violent tornado they quietly add --murder --suicide.  I could not comprehend in the least the meaning of that phrase.  And let me tell you had I been able to fully comprehend the meaning I could have never been prepared for the implications of that phrase.

It is sooo much to take in; so many questions left forever unanswered.

One day we were a normal family happily attending the church we'd been in for over twenty years.  We went out to lunch afterward for a burger with friends from church and before that normal afternoon lunch was over --life as we knew it - was also over.  Every part of it.

We were not perfect but we were an average, somewhat good family.  We had normal jobs. I'd worked in the insurance industry for thirty years.  I did nothing beyond go to my job, sit in traffic, keep up our home, go to church and spend time with family. We had been in our home for over twenty years.  My husband had been on his job 34 years.

We didn't "winter" in Aspen or vacation in the South of France.  We spent every holiday at home with family.  We played cards with our kids occasionally on Friday nights.  We went out to lunch with friends from church about every other Sunday.  I kept my two-year old grand baby every other weekend.  We didn't drink.  We didn't smoke.  I liked to cook so we seldom ever even ate out.  We weren't even adventurous enough to go to a larger church even ten miles away.  Instead we attended the tiny 100-year old Baptist church at the end of our street.  With so few people, everyone had several jobs so out of necessity I was on the building and grounds committee, the Communion Service committee and the church bulletin committee.

We were stable, predictable and painfully average.

My daughter, was a stay at home mother of three.  She volunteered at church; lead a crafting class in Bible School and she and my son in law had once been youth ministers and my son-in- law taught Sunday School and filled in as interim pastor at times.

My oldest son lived in NC.  He's married with two grown daughters.  He owns his own business, lives in a small house they had built on their land in rural northern NC.  He raises German Shepherds and she is a postal worker and has been on her job over twenty five years.

My youngest son had been a single dad of two children for twelve years after his wife left him for another man.  He worked hard on his job. He worked in his yard. He attended church although not regularly.  He didn't go out much and I used to tell him he would never find a girlfriend if the only place he ever went was work and to his mom's house.  He loved woodworking and built the beautiful five foot tall polished cross that hangs over the pulpit of our church.  Finally after twelve years single he met the girl of his dreams and married her after just four months.  They had the baby she had been told she could never have.  They had a new house that would have been totally paid for in five years.  They had just celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary.  And they had almost completed the total renovation of their new home after almost three years and they were now almost debt-free.

We were average, okay people --all of us.  Until we weren't.

In the span of an hour and a half we were a shell of family decimated by multiple loss.  All of us destroyed.  Tossed into a media circus and suddenly we went from being a boring, average, normal family to being "those people".  The determination made by the police in a very short few minutes altered our lives forever.  Not only did we all lose three members of our family but we went from having friends that loved us --to abandoned and avoided.  We went from being pillars of the community to --being stared at and pointed at when we went out anywhere in our quiet, familiar town where we had lived for over twenty years.  Family members did not know what to say to us so they avoided us altogether. We went from boring and average to being the subjects of a media circus that was literally worldwide.

We had to strategically postpone the publishing of the obituary until after the service.  We had to keep the service secret and by invitation only and we had to have the police in attendance to keep the angry crowds, media and TV cameras out.

We were disregarded, disrespected and talked down to and lied to by the investigators, the Sergeant in charge, the police Major and the coroner.  We had done nothing wrong.  We had had an unbelievable triple tragedy hit our family.  And instead of sympathy, support and understanding we were ostracized and treated like we were public enemy number one.

I was a mother that had lost my son and my grandchild and yet when I asked what the autopsy had revealed.  The coroner barked back at me "He died of a gunshot wound to the head but I expect you already knew that!"

The sergeant in charge of the investigation openly lied to us on multiple occasions and when I asked for --begged for proof, for a fair, full and complete investigation to at least prove what they were condemning my son for - I was told: "Giving you closure is not my job.  Finding the cause and manner of death is my job and I have that.  The investigation is closed."

This part was just the first year yet there is so much more that is not over and will never be over.

The general public acted like we somehow "deserved" this.  And certainly like they were glad that Brian was dead.  According to them he deserved to die and was a monster and we by association must also be monsters and it was unfathomable that we would love and miss our child.  He did not deserve the fairness of proving that determination and we did not deserve the truth or even what they would give to anyone - absolutely anyone else - a full and thorough investigation. Their minds were made up and they were so prejudiced against him until they had immediately been his accuser, his judge and his jury - Guilty was their verdict and since he was already executed their work was done.

Their verdict did not condemn him. Their verdict condemned all of us. His family.

We were shunned by many in our community.  My grandchildren were tormented on social media as if they had not had a huge and horrific loss.  They acted as if they deserved this.  We had no choice but to leave the home we had loved for so many years and move 100 miles away where we could be anonymous just so we could attempt to survive this.

In moving, I left my daughter --my only local child.  We had lived 4 miles apart for the past 20 years.  My three grandsons also lived within 10 miles of us and now I never see them.  My church that had been my solace and my comfort and my home for over twenty years - now gone.  I left my close knit community the people that had been my friends, my church family and my neighbors for twenty three years.

It was Home.  Home where all the memories of life with my family were.  That is where we had watched our grandchildren grow up, where I had taken thousands of family photos - birthday parties, prom pictures, wedding pictures; where we'd had twenty years of holidays and Sunday dinners, and family cookouts.  That was where all of my grandchildren learned to swim and canoe and ride four wheelers.    It was where we had buried twenty years of family pets.  It was where me and my three grandsons camped out in the backyard (for about an hour) when they were six and seven years old.  It was where my husband and my two sons spent four months building my mother an apartment over our detached garage and where she lived happily until she died.  It was where my husband, myself, and my sons hand built a two story barn from lumber cut from a 100-year old oak tree that fell on our property. It was where I watched over 100 young couples begin their life together as husband and wife including my brother, my sister, my son and my grandson.  It was where our church held 12 old fashioned baptisms in our lake with the entire church standing on the banks with tears in their eyes singing "Shall We Gather At The River" to the top of their lungs as another child was baptized into the family of God.

It was not just a house.  It was the best part of our lives - all of our lives for twenty three years.  It was heart-wrenching to leave my children, my church, my memories and my home.  It was another huge loss when I'd already lost so much.

It has been proven that secrets psychologically destroy people.  And yet we have no choice but to keep this god-awful secret.  The biggest and most devastating thing that has ever happened in our lives and we can't even acknowledge it.  It is like living in the Twilight Zone.  And keeping this secret is destroying all of us.  And still five years later we cannot openly grieve our children.  We can't talk about our loss or even acknowledge our grief for fear it will bring up questions we still do not know how to answer.

And now we live in the secret world of that anonymity.  I have neighbors I cannot tell.  I make friends that I cannot tell.  I go to church with a church family that I love and I live in guilt because I cannot be honest and I have to hide the biggest part of myself from them and feel like I am living a lie.

I know my child.  A mother knows what her child is and is not capable of.  He did not do what he was accused of.

I have researched personality traits of people that commit murder/suicide where an entire family has died.  And there are 10 common traits:

It is most always a man
There is always isolation - They isolate the family from other family and friends
They are consumed with hatred
They are extremely violent people
They block all escape routes
They all have previous and multiple occurrences of domestic violence
They are intolerant of retaliation (leaving, calling the police, filing for divorce etc.)
They try to prepare a history of their own that leaves them in a favorable light

The only one of these traits that apply here was that he was a man.

Supposedly the first thing the police look at is prior record for violence or previous reports of domestic violence.  There were none.  He had never been in any kind of trouble even as a teen.  He had never laid a hand on any woman ever including the ex-wife that left him pregnant with another man's child. He even in later years when they would allow it, brought that child to his house for a weekend visit with his own two children because she cried and felt left out and his daughter wanted her sister to come.  

Vengeful and violent - he was not.

There was no record ever of a domestic call to his home and he had lived in that same county for eighteen years.  Even the police admitted to me that that was unusual.

I truly believe that the police should be better trained to fully investigate a situation before they make a determination that is going to totally decimate every life connected with it.  There is no getting over such a mistake.



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