Sunday, February 6: The A.D.D. Detective
Another MURDEROUS WEEK in PARADISE
by Leigh Lundin
I liked murder mysteries ever since I can remember. Until I started writing, I paid scant attention to real crime. My interest was cerebral, the puzzle, matching wits with Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Lord Peter. While writing, I grew curious about the psychology of crime, perhaps because it was alien to me. A man once told me, "You don’t understand evil," days before he killed himself.
Romance authors write about relationships and love. Western authors write about pioneering the Wild West in the early days of our nation. Science fiction authors explore the effects of technology and social issues.
Mystery authors write about violent death.
We entertain our audience writing about homicide, about murder, about taking a precious human life and destroying it. I still like the puzzle, matching wits, but it’s wise to take stock of the topic we’re really talking about.
One More Murderer
With the scope of murder investigations in the Sunshine State leading with the Casey/Caylee Anthony case, it didn’t seem possible to shock jaded Floridians, but a mother of two exceeded our worst expectations.
Julie Powers Schenecker had been a US Army linguist stationed in Münich when she met her husband, an Army intelligence colonel, now stationed in the Middle East. After two years, she left the service and moved to Tampa where she raised their two children, Calyx, now 16, and Beau, age 13.
Last week, after buying a .38 caliber pistol, she picked up her son at soccer practice in her SUV. She shot him twice, killing him.
Mrs. Schenecker returned home and parked in their garage. She went upstairs and found her daughter studying her homework. She shot her daughter twice in the face, killing her.
When Mrs. Schenecker’s out-of-state mother couldn’t reach them, she phoned police the next day asking them to check on the family. Police found Schenecker sitting on the back porch, covered in blood.
As for motive, all she could say was she’d grown tired of the children ‘mouthing off.’
Locally, we feel stunned. It’s harsh to quantify, but this feels worse than the Anthony case. A toddler can’t fathom what is about to happen. A teen not only comprehends the terror, but grapples with the horror of their own mother– mad, bad, or sad– consummating both the beginning and end of life.
Despair and Disparity
What can we learn?
This could be a time to consider how differently we treat male and female perpetrators. Traditionally, if a male murders, we write him off as evil, as wicked, beyond redemption. If a female murders, we ask why? Is she sick? Disturbed? On drugs? What forces and motives drove her to kill? How can we understand her and, perhaps, help?
I don’t suggest we write women killers off as we do men. A local defense lawyer, Don West, confided he’d never had a single client who hadn’t had a nightmare of a childhood. A Virginia criminal attorney said killers don’t form in a vacuum. They’re abused, assaulted, tortured, maltreated beyond the ability of a childish mind to absorb without breaking.
But, maybe each of us is just a twig snap from wreaking our own horror.
Social scientists, viewing our astonishingly high execution and incarceration percentages, have long said we could save a fortune– and lives– if we could nip the problem in the bud. Unfortunately, they point out, we continue descending in the wrong direction.
Return of Hope
Not all crime news is dour and pessimistic. Recently, missing children– some from more than two decades ago– have been turning up– alive, Jaycee Dugard and Carlina White, to name two. Another found the strength to turn his kidnapper in after he abducted a second boy.
In a different case a few years ago, Shawn Hornbeck was found as police searched for a more recently kidnapped boy, Ben Ownby. I noticed Hornbeck’s web site his parents set up for his search is still active, this time bringing out the stories of other kidnappings. If you missed Shawn Hornbeck’s tale, it was broadcast on 48 Hours.
Final Thought
Murder mysteries won’t be reduced to mere academic exercises for a long time to come. Perhaps like laughter and song, they help us cope with reality.
In a film depicting violence I tend to ‘watch’ with eyes closed, all the while reminding myself it’s only a story. Though disturbing, I cope better reading about violence in a novel, though only marginally.
However, when the TV news footage and newspaper or CB crime report are real – understanding no stuntman will be resurrected for another take, that the actions described are not the creation of someone’s fertile imagination – my stomach churns.
The anguish when that mother realises what she has done doesn’t bear thinking about, nor whatever drove her to it.
All I can say is, don’t put me on her jury. Mouthing off does not constitute shooting two teens in the face twice each. I don’t care what happened to her as a kid.
As a matter of fact, I can’t think of a reason to shoot anyone in the face at close range twice.
My mother collected guns and was a markswoman with a pistol, rifle and bow and arrow.
Glad she didn’t get po’d for “mouthing off” teens.
>Glad she didn’t get po’d for “mouthing off” teens.
(chuckling) That’s still true today, you mouthy girl! alisa, my mother wasn’t a collector, but she kept her own carbine. As rationing continued after WW-II, my mother obtained her own protein, shooting rabbits and the occasional squirrel.
ABA, here we’ve become so inured to the Anthony investigation (more an ‘event’ than a case), hearing Casey reports along with local weather, it’s become part of the background noise. Perhaps that’s while we felt shocked to be shocked by the Schenecker homicides. I’m sure the father’s arrived back from Qatar, but I can’t imagine what he feels.
but I can’t imagine what he feels….
like shooting her in the face twice?
I know I know…..
I really have little sympathy (can you tell?) for people who take their “lack of fill-in-the-blank” on their children. She could’ve easily put the gun to her own face and got herself once. It’s enough.
There is a way to keep from having mouthing off kids or crying kids. Birth control and/or abortion are free if you can’t keep the ol’ “no” going.
I mean really.
There’s never a reason to kill your child. Why didn’t any of these people just walk away? Everyone would have been better off in the end.
I suspect that’s the problem, Deborah. In the madness of the moment, no on thinks these things out.
Sobering, and a sad comment on what people are capable of doing. It would appear that today even our own children are to be violently discarded when they become troublesome or inconvenient. Increasingly, it seems, children are considered expendable; a natural result, I think, of our current culture of narcissism–after all, what can possibly be more important than oneself? And if our kids fail to adequately reflect our personal beauty and add to our glorification, well then, what can they expect?
Happily, most people rejoice in their kids, and life in general for that matter, and I am grateful for their company. As to the dreadful childhoods that most criminals claim as an excuse for their acts; I simply counter that thousands of others from similar backgrounds have found a way to refrain from violent crime. Most, in fact, manage to lead pretty decent lives. Except in the cases of genuine lunatics, there are always choices. And for real criminals the choice is simple–self over others; everytime. Fictional bad guys are far more interesting and entertaining than the genuine item.
In fictional mysteries we usually know there is some form of justice done, this may be one of the many reasons we read them.
Good point, Jeff. I like writing because I can make the story turn out the way I want, and if I do it right, the way readers want.
David, that’s as elegant a summation as anyone could hope for.