|
Post by Janeen on Jul 14, 2003 23:57:54 GMT -5
On June 28th, 2003, my parents killed my brother-in-law. The story starts almost a year ago when my younger sister started dating the man who would be her future husband. They married when she was 17 last October. He had just turned 21. The marriage was consented by both parents. The day before the murder, my mother and my brother-in-law got into an argument over the phone. It exculated and my mother starting threatening to kill him. I was with her when she started making the threats but I did not really think she would go through with it and told her to stop, to let the kids live their lives--my sister was five months pregnant. She got very angry at me and dropped me off at my apartment that day. There was a call from her later that night that upset me so my sister and her husband stayed the night because I was still very upset. The next day, my mother called, wanting stuff she had left at my apartment. She was going to come over with the police. However, they showed up without the police. I stood by the door holding it closed because I knew that either she or my dad had the key. Instead of using the key, she smashed the glass on the door, causing glass to fall on me, then unlocked the door and came in. She then started beating on my brother-in-law, calling him names. My father came in seconds behind her with a rifle in his hands. Without hardly any warning at all, he came into the livingroom, turned, pointed the gun at my brother-in-law and shot him three times. My parents then walked out of the apartment and waited downstairs for the police to arrived while I stood in the kitchen screaming. They are both being charged with first degree intentional homicide but they are--I believe--going to try to do not guilty by reason of insanity. These past two weeks have been very hard for both my sister and myself. Not only did I witness the murder but since it happened in my apartment, I could no longer live there. And, since my name was all over the papers--as well as my parents'--it was difficult finding a new place. I still do not know what to think. It seems surreal sometimes. Your parents are not supposed to kill people. But they did and have since shown no remorse for what they have done. Everything has changed and nothing is the same anymore. And it's really, really very hard for me. I have nightmares and get very angry sometimes because I don't feel that people understand what I'm going through. My sister and I are closer than we ever were after going through this event but it still doesn't change the fact that it happened and nothing's going to be the same ever again. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
|
|
|
Post by Charlene on Jul 15, 2003 1:13:31 GMT -5
Hello Janeen. I am so sorry about this terrible tragedy that has happened to your family. I can't even imagine what you are going through right now. I hope you will be comfortable talking to others here. You and your sister are obviously in for some very rough times ahead. You will find many people here who can offer good advice and comfort. Your sister is really going to need you since she has lost her husband and has the baby coming. Had your parents exhibited violent tendencies before? Do you feel that they were insane at the time of the murder? From your post, it sounds as though you might have experienced some bad situations with one or both of them in the past.
|
|
BethMariansChild
Sophomore
Regular
May the Great Goddess bless you in whatever path you choose.
Posts: 63
|
Post by BethMariansChild on Jul 15, 2003 16:00:09 GMT -5
Janeen,
I am so very sorry that not only did your parents kill your brother-in-law and leave their daughter a widow along with making her child fatherless, but they committed a crime against you as far as I am concerned by making you witness this horrible act in your own home. I am so very, very sorry that this has happened to you and wish with all my might that there were some way to turn back the clock so this tragedy could be avoided.
I hope that you have been able to find suitable housing by now. It is an example of the ripple effect of criminal acts that you experienced difficulty with this. It isn't fair, but it is nonetheless a bitter reality that when those around us commit violent crimes, everyone around them suffers.
Hang on to your sister. Help her through the birth of her child. You will be doubly blessed by doing these things for her now that she is alone.
Sending healing energies to all involved,
|
|
|
Post by Janeen on Jul 15, 2003 23:15:05 GMT -5
Thank you both for the kind words. It has been very difficult and it's complicated by the fact that people expect me to jump back and be able to act like a normal person right away. And, if I don't, then I'm unappreciative, moody, bi*chy and selfish like I expect everything to be handed to me instead of working for it. And it's not that so much that I have bad days and days that are better than the bad days. And on the better days, I can handle things but on the bad days, there are a lot of things I cannot handle. And for my older sister, who I'm staying with, I'm nothing more than an inconvenience and a threat to her normal life as well as a deterant to it.
At least my younger sister and I have grown closer because of this. For years, we have dealt with major battles of sibling rivalry--mainly because I have felt that my parents favored her over me. Now, all that has been erased and we have come to need each other almost to the point of life and death as in, if one of us were not here, the other would not be able to deal with it either. She is the reason I have not completely lost it. The night I was very close to it, she told me she needed me and that the baby needed me and I told her that I would try hard to get through it with her. But it definitely has not been easy.
Fortunately, I only have 40 days to wait until my fiance gets home. He's been gone since December of 2001 and I've missed him terribly. He knows what happened but his boss would not let him come home early. And with the fact that he didn't have that much time left, we didn't fight it. He merely told him that he would not stay for another year as he was considering.
But something like this definitely shows you who your real friends are.
I just wish the anger would go away. I hate it and I hate being angry towards people but sometimes it's the only way I can deal with things, by screaming and yelling and swearing. Unfortunately, it's not something other people like.
To answer some of Charlene's questions, my parents have been angry people for a long time. There was a story of a fight between my mom and dad that happened when she was pregnant with me. There was concern that something would happen to me as a result because my dad had actually gotten physically violent with her. My mother also bit him. The police were called in on it too. My dad left and moved back in with his ex-wife who is certifiably insane (long story) and except for brief visits (one of which resulted in my sister), he didn't have much contact with us until I was 11 and he moved in with us. They had been divorced for ten years at that time. They remarried when I was 14.
I never liked him. He had always been very verbally abusive and from that, I suffered from low self esteem. He and my mom fought a lot and sometimes, they were close to physical. My mother had an insurance policy out on him and she had been planning for years to kill him. We all figured he'd kill her first, either from the stress or some other way. We always felt we had to walk on egg shells around him.
My mother is manipulative. She's always trying to live through her children starting with my older sister. When my older sister started college, my mom decided she had to go back to school too. She pressured me into going to the school she was going to because she liked that school and no other school was good enough. When I didn't do quite what she wanted, we fought. She's hit me a number of times. Last year, she threatened to kill me. I went to another town and stayed with my brother for three days because I was afraid of her. But, it wasn't enough to get her committed. Both of my parents have the ability to act absolutely sane in public.
Do I believe they are insane? I do not believe that a sane person would pick up a gun and kill someone. Did they know what they were doing? Yes. They knew and they were planning it and I had been hearing it out of her for months that she was going to do it because I spent practically everyday with her--we were getting along until the day before it happened. We went shopping three days before for crying out loud! I mean, she was perfectly "normal" until Friday when she got into a verbal argument with my brother-in-law over the phone. Throughout the day, she kept getting angrier and angrier until she was totally ranting and raving. She was going to make him pay, she kept telling me. So, in that sense, I think something snapped in her and she did lose it. But she had been planning it for months so it wasn't due to insanity because she lived sanely in society for those months prior.
As for my dad, when he fired those shots, he was absolutely calm. He wasn't yelling or screaming. He basically committed an execution. And when they were done, they walked out the door and waited for the police. When the police arrived, my dad told them that he shot my brother-in-law upstairs and that the gun was in the van. The bullets for that gun was even with the gun, they had somehow gotten mixed up with my older brother's stuff and had been moving with him from place to place for years. My parents had to have actually bought the bullets for the gun.
Even writing this and remembering all this, it still seems very surreal. I was there and sometimes, I just cannot believe that they did this and I cannot believe that my brother-in-law is dead because of them.
Anyway, forgive me for the long post, sometimes I do go and ramble but as I'm not given much of a chance to ramble elsewhere but therapy--which is once a week--this gives me at least a place to sort of vent and that helps me keep at least a little bit of my sanity.
|
|
|
Post by Janeen on Jul 15, 2003 23:47:31 GMT -5
I put all the articles I found so far on what happened in the murder articles section. Surprised though that there are no pictures of my parents in there.
|
|
|
Post by walkingtimebomb on Jul 25, 2003 5:47:45 GMT -5
Janine please feel free to email me.
God Bless,
Sincerely
|
|