FILICIDE (and suicide): Louisiana: death of Nadia Braxton and her 3 children

July 12, 2011

 

 The home in Kenner, La., where a 29-year-old mother of three was found shot to death, lying atop the dead bodies of her children. (WWL-TV)

(CBS News)  A woman from Kenner, La., a suburb near New Orleans, was found dead inside her home by her husband Tuesday, lying atop the bodies of her three children, all of whom had died from apparent gunshot wounds, reports CBS affiliate WWL-TV.

The husband told police he had just come home from work when he discovered the bodies. No charges have been filed. Police have not ruled out the possibility that it was a murder-suicide.

The victims in the shooting were identified as: Nadia Braxton, 29; Kayla Peters, 12; a 1-year-old child, Nayah Peters and a 6-month-old, Nyla Peters, WWL reports.

Kenner Police Chief Steve Caraway said the when the husband got home and "didn't hear anything, he eventually walked upstairs and found them, all of the kids, lying in the bed."

The mother suffered a gunshot wound to her forehead, Caraway said. The 1-year-old and the 6-month-old also both suffered gunshot wounds to the forehead. The Kenner Police Department hasn't released information about how the 12-year-old was killed.

The woman was struggling to pay the mortgage on her home, which she bought just before Hurricane Katrina, The Times-Picayune reports.

The property was first seized by the Sheriff's Office in January of 2010 for failure to make mortgage payments, The Times-Picayune reports. Braxton's case was dismissed a few months later when she brought her payments up to date, only to have the Sheriff's Office seize the property again for non-payments in December of last year.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/12/national/main20078977.shtml

FILICIDE (multiple threatened): Nebraska

LORI PILGER / Lincoln Journal Star  June 15, 2011 

Police say a 31-year-old woman took her three young children to a Lincoln hospital and said someone needed to take them from her or she would kill them.
Officer Katie Flood said the mother has not been charged with anything and has been admitted to the hospital for treatment.
The children -- boys ages 2 and 3 and a girl, 4 -- were turned over to Child Protective Services.
"A year or two years ago, this would have been a safe haven case," Flood said.
But in November 2008 -- months after the state attracted national attention for a safe haven law that allowed caregivers to surrender a child of any age without fear of prosecution for abandonment -- lawmakers restricted it to babies 30 days old or younger.
Lawmakers said they had intended to keep newborns from being abandoned in Dumpsters or other unsafe, out-of-the-way places.
Still, Flood said, the woman in this case did the right thing by going to a hospital for help, even though the safe haven law didn't apply.
In court records, Officer Scott Parker said the woman took her children to BryanLGH Medical Center West on Sunday "by her own accord, saying someone needed to take her children from her or she would kill them."
Parker said the woman said she planned to drive her car into a lake, with the children inside the vehicle, but didn't want them to suffer because of her situation.
She said she is unemployed and unable to provide for them. Their father is in jail on suspicion of felony child abuse for spanking one of his sons with a piece of wood.
According to court records, the woman was taken into Emergency Protective Custody because of her suicidal and homicidal thoughts.
Flood said parents in similar situations should seek help whether it's through a trusted friend or family member "or, like she did, going to the hospital or another professional."

http://journalstar.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/article_9c80904b-3c5f-5873-bf68-0f0706d49056.html#ixzz1QI7leQcl

FILICIDE (multiple): Quebec: Shedding light on the darkest of crimes: family killings

JANET BAGNALL,  May 27, 2011

 

 The trial of Guy Turcotte, a cardiologist charged with killing his two small children, started just days after a 28-year-old mother walked into the freezing waters of the Rivière des Prairies, a twomonth-old baby in her arms and her five-year-old son attached to one of her wrists.

Then, as Quebecers reeled from learning of Turcotte's frenzied knife attack against his children in 2009, another father put his three little children in his truck, set it ablaze, and went off to kill himself.
Seven people died in the three incidents. Only Turcotte, the baby from the river and a badly burned 6-year-old who escaped his father's attempt on his life survived.
What was going on in Quebec society? How could parents do such things to their own children?
Little is known about the young mother, but the two fathers, Turcotte and Martin Houle, appear to fit a pattern where personality characteristics in combination with a lengthy and acute family crisis formed an "explosive cocktail," says Quebec psychology professor Suzanne Léveillée. Turcotte's superior education did not make him atypical, Léveillée says. Men who kill their children and/ or whole families are often middle-class.
Léveillée, together with Julie Lefebvre, her Université du Québec à Trois Rivières colleague, will launch a book on the subject of murder within the family at the International Conference on Violence against Women to be held in Montreal May 29 to June 1.
Because the three cases were all over the media at the same time, it might seem to Quebecers that there has been an increase in the number of children murdered by their parents, but statistically this is not true. There is a distressing sameness to the numbers year in and out. Between 1997 and 2007, 68 children in the province were killed by a parent. Forty of the 68 were killed by their father, 28 by their mother.
Men and women kill for different reasons, research suggests. Men kill out of vengeance against the woman who has spurned them. Women tend to kill their children out of a misplaced "altruism," in which they think they are sparing the child the same misery they themselves have endured.
Men also tend to be responsible for "familicides," in which the whole family is killed. Quebec's chief coroner investigated 16 such cases dating from 1986 to 2000. In all cases, it was a man who carried out the killings. Excessive violence - such as the savage knife attacks by Turcotte on his children - was a characteristic in nearly half of these killings.
Léveillée and Lefebvre studied 10 of these "familicides." They found that there seemed little to suggest ahead of time that the men would go to the extreme of killing their entire family rather than "lose" them. Eight of the 10 men were working. Five were in the process of separating from their spouse. Only one man had a criminal past, and it had nothing to do with violence against another person. Only one man had been hospitalized in a psychiatric centre in the year before he killed his family. Nine of the men killed themselves afterward, one in prison.

"It is very difficult to foresee these crises," Léveillée told me. "Men don't consult when they are in distress."
But there are signs, she said. Among the strongest is the breakup of the couple, particularly if one or both of the partners are incapable of accepting a separation, feel the separation is something they cannot live through. Other signs include the presence of psychological or physical violence, threats of suicide, alcohol or drug consumption, and unhinged behaviour like frequent, hysterical phone calls.
For their book, Léveillée and Lefebvre interviewed, in prison, Quebec men who had killed their spouse. Out of 100 possibilities, only 23 agreed to talk to the researchers. They did so, Léveillée said, "not out of guilt - it's not obvious that they regret what they did. If it was a child, they think it was unfortunate. In many cases, they are not people who feel regret. They have personality disorders.
"Talking to us, I think, was a form of making reparations. It wasn't possible to stop them, but maybe by talking about it they can help stop someone else."
Although Léveillée does not think this spring's killings were connected, she worries that child-custody battles are becoming more of a minefield. Today's Quebec has fewer children and more separations. "We'll see in a few years whether there is a trend here," she said. "It may stabilize, but it is something to watch."

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Shedding+light+darkest+crimes+family+killings/4846675/story.html#ixzz1NqCyTh80

FILICIDE (and suicide): India: Nidhi Gupta; Deepti Chauhan

April 28, 2011

Mumbai:  Wary of the negative impact of the spate of suicides in middle-class families, where mothers killed their children and ended their own lives afterwards, on the young minds, city schools are contemplating calling for a parent-children counselling sessions as soon as the institutes reopen. In the two recent incidents, three children -- aged 3, 5 and 7 years, respectively -- were killed by their own mothers who themselves committed suicide afterwards. The worry has been the collateral damage to those left behind.
Parents, particularly younger couples, are discussing the reasons and impact of this disturbing trend on their children. Purvi Gogri, parent of a student of Vissanji Academy School in Andheri (east), feels that it was not right for a mother to kill her child and commit suicide. "But sometimes financial pressure and problems at home can be very depressing and if the husband is not supportive than one feels very helpless."
With increasing depression and marital discord among couples, children become the vulnerable victim of their warring parents' ire. "It's almost scary. What sort of a social order are we creating, where people, driven to death, dare not leave their children behind for fear of what the rest of the world will do to them? But, parents have no right to end the lives of their own children." says Kalpana Raut, principal of a Virar school.
Ankita Mittal, a Std VIII student of Uttpal Shanghvi School, said, "I cannot imagine the plight of a 5-year-old boy who died last Saturday after his mother pushed him from the building terrace. It's hard to believe a mother can kill her own child. I am still shocked."
A little over a month ago, 32-year-old chartered accountant Nidhi Gupta threw her son (7) and daughter (3) down from the 19th floor of a Malad building, before jumping to death herself. A few days ago, in a similar incident Deepti Chauhan (32) hurled her 5-year-old son, Sandesh, from a seven-storey building and herself leapt to death in Dahisar.
Panicked by the incident Ritu Duggal, principal of Thakur Public School where Sandesh studied, has decided to have a meeting and counselling sessions with the parents of their students. Dr Mohini Paul, a child psychologist at Bandra (west), said, "Inflation is one of the major reasons for stress. In today's times, the expectation from women is a lot more. Today, a woman is not only expected to do household chores, but also make money to survive the growing expenses. Often, constant negative thinking, loneliness and depression lead to committing suicide."

http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/wary-of-family-suicides-schools-consider-counselling-102017?cp

FILICIDE (multiple): Quebec

April 21, 2011

A Montreal mother of two who was pulled from a river with her two young sons has died.

Police spokesman Danny Richer said the 28-year-old woman, who has not been identified, died Wednesday at 1 p.m. The woman's four-year-old son died April 18, 10 days after the apparent murder-suicide attempt.
Police said the boy and his brother had been dragged into the icy waters off the city's north end on April 8. The older boy was tied to the mother's wrist while the baby was in her arms, police said.
They remained in the water for several minutes until a passerby rescued them.
The two-month-old baby is doing well and has been discharged from the hospital, police said. The baby is being cared for by family.
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/04/21/montreal-mother-who-tried-to-kill-her-two-children-dies-police

FILICIDE: New Jersey: Patricia Graham-Hawthorne filicide and suicide

 March 04, 2011,  By Bob Considine and Eugene Paik/The Star-Ledger
Staff writers Mike Frassinelli and Seth Augenstein contributed to this report.

 

Star-LedgerPatricia Graham-Hawthorne, left, and Allison

 From the outside world, Patricia A. Graham-Hawthorne seemed to be living a dream life with a child she cherished, a husband who provided, a supportive family and friends, and a home on a hill in idyllic Bernardsville.
But a different reality was served Thursday when authorities announced that Graham-Hawthorne had drowned her 4-year-old daughter, Allison, before taking her own life in brutal fashion. Those who knew the Westfield native are now searching for answers in their anguish.
"She had so many people she could talk to," said Chris Gray, a long-time friend of Graham-Hawthorne. "But apparently she didn’t think she did."
Somerset County Prosecutor Geoffrey D. Soriano said in a statement Graham-Hawthorne drowned her daughter on Feb. 24 in an upstairs bathroom of their $1.9 million home on Round Top Road. She then killed herself by ingesting paint thinner and filling her lungs with water, in addition to slicing her wrists.
Soriano’s statement said investigators learned Graham-Hawthorne had been accessing numerous websites that detailed methods of committing suicide. Jack Bennett, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, did not return phone calls seeking for further detail.
Robert P. Hawthorne, Graham’s husband and a partner in a New York-based insurance company, could not be reached. He was the one who discovered the horrific scene and called 911, authorities have said.
Graham, 45, and Hawthorne, 59, were married about five years ago, friends said. They lived in Blauvelt, N.Y., in Rockland County, before moving to Bernardsville early last year. Hawthorne divorced from his previous wife in 2001 and has several grown children from that marriage.
Several of Graham-Hawthorne’s friends said she went through great lengths to have a child. She underwent fertility treatments for more than a year before Allison was conceived. Gray said she was "elated" when she became pregnant with Allison.
"She really enjoyed being a mom," he said.

One friend, who declined to give a name, said Graham-Hawthorne originally was content with not having a child in her mid-30s but then had a change of heart.
"I think she thought, 'You know, my life isn't very complete,' " the friend said.
After Allison was born, Graham-Hawthorne would occasionally talk about the "challenges of parenting."
"But there was nothing there to indicate it would raise to the level of this," the friend said. "She always (seemed to) have a handle on parenting."
Shanaz Shaheen, one of Allison’s teachers at the Montessori Center of Nyack, N.Y., described Graham-Hawthorne as a caring and reserved woman, who was a "good parent" involved in her child’s education.
"She was always on top of things and attended all the school events," Shaheen said.
Shaheen said Graham-Hawthorne sometimes spoke of her struggles to conceive another child, but never revealed any larger issues.
"There was nothing out of the ordinary," she said.
Graham-Hawthorne, a homemaker who would sometimes cut hair, maintained a Facebook page that listed www.tiredofyelling.com as one of her likes. The site promotes calm parenting techniques through group classes. The site’s host, Aviva Schwab, said she did not know Graham-Hawthorne.
Typically, there are five patterns of "filicide," or murder of one’s child, that are identified by mental health experts, said Melissa Runyon, professor of psychiatry at UMDNJ-School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford.
Categories include maltreatment resulting in death, psychotic episodes and parents who simply don’t want to have the child anymore. But two more complex categories include "altruistic" filicide in which the parent — generally a mother — decides to kill the child and then herself to protect the child from a threat or perceived threat, Runyon said. The final, least common instance of a parent killing a child, is for taking revenge on the other spouse, she said.
Runyon, not speaking specifically to the Graham-Hawthorne case, said filicide is not always preceded by a pattern of abuse.
"It very well might be that these are loving parents, kind parents — and then all of a sudden, you have the incident. And it’s almost unbelievable to everybody," she said.
Little is known about the dynamics of Graham-Hawthorne’s relationship with her husband. One friend said she had an uneasy relationship with one of Hawthorne’s three grown children from his previous marriage.
When Allison was born, the family still lived in Blauvelt. A former neighbor in New York said the couple went back-and-forth on their decision to move to New Jersey. They eventually sold their Rockland County home in October 2009.
Allison, a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl, was to start kindergarten in the fall. She had attended the Albrook School in Basking Ridge and took swimming, language and karate classes, according to her obituary.
Both mother and daughter were laid to rest Wednesday at Fairview Cemetery in Westfield.
Jeni Gray-Roberts, another friend of Graham-Hawthorne, said the shock of this tragedy won’t wear off.
"Her Christmas cards always had a picture of Alli," she said. "Her daughter was everything to her."
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/03/somerset_county_officials_say.html

FILICIDE (Multiple attempted): Michigan: Shanda Lou Yenglin

BILL LAITNER Mar. 2, 2011 

Was she a child abuser who nearly became a child killer, luring her children toward death with drug-laced milkshakes?

Or was Shanda Lou Yenglin a deeply religious single mother who, feeling she had nowhere to turn, killed herself and hoped her four adopted children would join her in the afterlife?

Those are two descriptions of the 37-year-old Waterford mother surfacing from a bizarre case that unfolded during the weekend and ended tragically Monday morning on a quiet street in Oakland County.

Authorities said Yenglin had a history of child abuse and that she tried to kill her four adopted children in the course of committing suicide Monday in the garage of the family's home near Williams Lake.

According to Waterford police, none of the children was even supposed to be spending the night with Yenglin. She lost custody in May 2010, with the two girls going to live with a foster parent and the boys placed in a state facility, Sgt. Scott Good said. Yenglin was allowed unsupervised daily visits but left messages with the children's custodians at 8 p.m. Saturday that she could not return them because of inclement weather, Good said. Oakland County Family Court Deputy Administrator Lisa Langton said Tuesday that a neglect petition had been filed against Yenglin last year but could not give details.

Her children narrowly survived the carbon monoxide poisoning that killed her, police said. Waterford police said Tuesday that Yenglin gave the children "sleeping or pain type medication" Sunday night, apparently to make them more docile in her attempt to kill them. Police found the home thermostat at 53 degrees and the house cold, part of an apparent ruse to keep the children with her to stay warm in their 1998 Chevrolet van as its engine filled their closed garage with deadly fumes. Police would not release the contents of the suicide note she left on the van's dashboard.

On Monday morning, the 13-year-old girl woke up in the van to find her mother unconscious on the garage floor. She then ran into the house to alert the sleeping 14-year-old girl -- who had not followed her mother into the garage -- who then called the police, Good said.

http://www.freep.com/article/20110302/NEWS03/103020436/0/ENT07/Suicidal-mother-tried-kill-her-kids-drugged-milkshakes?odyssey=nav%7Chead

FILICIDE (multiple): England: Claudia Oakes-Green

 Claire Ellicott and Nick Mcdermott
27th February 2011

'Killed': Eleanor Oakes-Green was found dead at her family's home alongside her brother and mother

A church-going lecturer is believed to have killed her two children before taking her own life while her husband was away on business.
The bodies of Claudia Oakes-Green, 44, her son Thomas, 13, and seven-year-old daughter Eleanor were discovered  at their home after concerned relatives raised the alarm.
Mrs Oakes-Green’s husband Iain, a wind energy specialist, was in Scandinavia at the time of the tragedy and is believed to have flown home to Britain yesterday.
Police refused to reveal the exact circumstances of the deaths in Shepshed, Leicestershire, but said they were not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident.
Last night relatives told of their devastation and described the deaths as ‘difficult to comprehend’.
In a statement issued by Leicestershire Police, they described Mrs Oakes-Green as a loving, gentle, kind and protective woman who had been the ‘rock’ of the family.
Paying tribute to Eleanor, a Brownie, and rugby player Thomas, they went on: ‘The children were beautiful, they were both very caring.
'Eleanor would go out of her way to make sure other children felt included. She was lively, active and had a real impish streak.
‘Thomas was a gentle soul. Very loving and never had a bad word to say about anybody.’
The Oakes-Greens were active members of their local Roman Catholic church.

Widower: Iain Oakes-Green was in Scandinavia at the time of the tragedy

Tragedy: The family were found dead at their home near Loughborough, Leicestershire

'Victim': Eleanor Oakes-Green was found dead on Tuesday night

Mrs Oakes-Green was a lecturer at Wyggeston & Queen Elizabeth I College in Leicester. Her husband, 47, works at Campbell Scientific, a U.S. company which develops instruments to measure the weather.
He is based at the European headquarters in Shepshed.
Friends and neighbours continued to speak of their horror and confusion over the deaths on Wednesday.
Denis Shiels, Eleanor’s headteacher at St Winefride’s Catholic Primary School, said: ‘It came as a tremendous shock. We will be holding a series of assemblies and prayerful reflections.’
Diane Horn, chairman of Shepshed Town Council, told how her daughter was friends with Eleanor. ‘My little girl’s been quite upset, as are many other children,’ she said.
‘They were very well-loved and, although a private family, very likeable. Both worked very hard in the community and the children were absolutely adorable.’
Neighbours spoke of how the family enjoyed walking their dog in the countryside together and had gone sledging during the recent snow.
Parish deacon Bill Hutchinson, 83, who lives in the same road, said: ‘Everyone around here is shocked.
‘They seemed such a normal and nice family. We just don’t know what could have happened.’
It is believed the family were planning to move to the North East, where Mr Oakes-Green was from, in the next few months. His wife was said to be against the move.
Meanwhile, police said post-mortem examinations had been completed and investigations were being carried out for the coroner.


 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360612/Eleanor-Oakes-Green-Father-flies-home-wife-killed-children-committed-suicide.html#ixzz1FpF1d8MC

FILICIDE (and suicide): Malaysia: Mother throws child off building, then jumps to her death

February 8, 2011 : RASHITHA A. HAMI

SERI KEMBANGAN: A woman, believed to be mentally unstable, flung her five-year-old daughter from the fourth floor of a flat here before jumping to her own death from the 10th floor of the same building.

The murder-cum-suicide occurred after the woman's husband went out to repair his car, after dropping them off at Pangsapuri Aman, Jalan SK6/1 Seri Kembangan, here, Tuesday.
It is learnt the couple had attended a Chinese New Year event at the husband's company in Sri Serdang at about 9am, before picking up their only child from kindergarten around 11.30am.
A family friend, identified only as Ling, said the husband received a call from his housemate 10 minutes later, informing him of incident.
It is learnt that the 35-year-old woman had been mentally ill and was under medication.
"She was always threatening to kill herself. But we never expected this to happen as she had behaved normally at the do," Ling said when met at the scene.
Serdang OCPD Supt Abdul Razak Elias said police had received a call from a member of the public at 12.30pm, alerting them to the incident.
He said they found the bodies in pools of blood at two different spots.
Police have refused to reveal the identities of the woman and child. The bodies were sent to Serdang Hospital for a post-mortem.
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/2/8/nation/20110208191125&sec=nation

FILICIDE: California: Crystal Lewis

Jan. 26, 2011:  Pablo Lopez and Paula Lloyd / The Fresno Bee

The Madera County woman suspected of killing her 5-year-old daughter this week before jumping to her death from a bridge had fought in court to win custody of the girl in 2008, court records show.
But before siding with Crystal Lewis in her bitter custody battle with her ex-boyfriend, a judge ordered her to get counseling because she had used drugs, according to documents in the child custody case in Madera County Superior Court.
The records paint a picture of a family life plagued with violence and drugs. But authorities are still trying to determine why Lewis apparently slashed her daughter's throat.
Autopsies have been completed on Lewis, 23, and her daughter, Marijane Lyn Lewis, but Madera County sheriff's officials are no closer to understanding the motive.
Sheriff's spokeswoman Erica Stuart said toxicology tests on Crystal Lewis' body have been taken, and the results will be available in about three weeks.

Marijane Lyn Lewis, 5 (left) and her mother, Crystal Lynn Lewis, were found dead Tuesday in what Madera County authorities called a murder-suicide.Authorities said Marijane's grandfather, Robert Lewis, discovered the girl's body about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday in the Nipinnawasee home near Ahwahnee that he and his wife, Lidia, shared with Crystal Lewis and Marijane. Authorities found the body of Crystal Lewis three hours later under the William Sell Bridge in Mariposa County, about 2-1/2 miles away. Members of the Lewis family and Marijane's father, Taj Gutierrez, 29, of Coarsegold, could not be reached Wednesday to comment. Reached at his home in Midpines, Gutierrez's father, Alex Gutierrez, 59, declined to comment. But on Facebook, he wrote: "I lost my granddaughter ... today. She was only 5 and half. She was murdered this morning by her mother who then killed herself. Please pray for us as the grief is too much to bear. I'm crushed and totally heart broken. She was my reason for living." The custody-dispute documents give details of past conflicts in the family. Months after Marijane was born, her mother left Gutierrez, citing an abusive relationship.
In a written statement included in the court record, Lewis said she left her boyfriend because he was selling marijuana from the Coarsegold home they had shared. She moved into her parents' home on Windsong Way in March 2006.

"I was in fear for the safety of my daughter and myself," Lewis said.
She detailed a fight in July 2006 when, she said, Gutierrez pushed her to the ground and held her down after threatening to kill her and take away her daughter.
But in his own statement, Gutierrez said Lewis had started that fight. She came to his Coarsegold home and accused him of cheating on her, he said.
"She kept asking why I didn't love her," Gutierrez said in his sworn statement. "Crystal began saying that she was going crazy and she wasn't a good mother and that she can't take care of Marijane."
"She wanted to kill herself and be put away in a mental institution," he said.
Gutierrez said Lewis was upset because a female friend of his was at the house. Lewis threatened to slit the woman's throat and kill her, Gutierrez said.
The friend, Sarah Manning, also gave a sworn statement about the incident, saying Lewis was the aggressor. Lewis kicked, hit and scratched Gutierrez, Manning said.
In September 2006, Lewis told a judge that she had stopped taking drugs. She accused Gutierrez of continuing to use drugs, and she asked the judge for primary custody of their daughter.
The judge ordered Lewis to attend counseling.
On Nov. 14, 2007, Lewis submitted proof to the court that she had attended six sessions with a clinical psychologist.
The judge later gave Lewis primary custody and in April 2008 ordered Gutierrez to make monthly child-support payments of $183.

 http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/01/26/2248625/court-records-detail-family-strife.html#ixzz1CWL84QXc