it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/25/1223246
Homepage Psychologically speaking, the very act of going to prison(even if its minimum security)can be highly damaging. There is no telling what caused this guy to snap but its likely that he didn't sit there and stew about it and decide to do it on his own. It was likely a snap decision brought on by q pretty high amount of stress and depression. Not justifying it, just stating that its not so cut and dry as a simple choice to kill your family.
If he was still alive and having to defend himself in court, he'd probably plead temporary insanity. Something must have really snapped in his head, put him on another plane of consciousness. I can't believe a father would really kill his innocent little child. I want to believe that he would not have done so in even a remotely reasonable state of mind.
This kind of murder-suicide is a relatively common experience (murder-suicides being highly uncommon events in the first place). The shrinks and the profilers believe that this particular type of murder is an insidious relative of a "vanilla" suicide. The male figure feels shamed due to personal and professional failings and feels that he is unable to provide for his family. However, the basis for the suicidal impulse is the fear of being unable to care for the family, a result guaranteed by the suicide. Therefore, the perpetrator, as "patriarch" decides to commit suicide for the entire family. That way, he can prevent them from dealing with the consequences of his failings and his suicide. These cases often appear in connection with financial failures.
It is not unreasonable to consider that any given email spammer would, if it could be profitable, commit murder. So what does this statement say about the majority of CEOs in corporate America. Keep in mind, several studies have show CEOs sociopathic behaviors in regard to their decisions.
If there is money in it and the chance to get caught reasonably small, some company will certainly do it. Hell, if murder was legal you'd have murder agencies pop up left and right, if the money is right. If it is profitable and either legal altogether or at least the chance to get caught is small enough (or the fines well within the profit margin), a company will do it. The formula for profit is income minus expenses, morals doesn't exist in that equation. And while every person may have moral concerns, they don't apply as soon as a company can absorb that moral problem. A worker there could have moral qualms because he does something he knows is "wrong", but he has to do it, he has to bring home money to feed his kids. A manager who lays off a worker he knows can't get a new job and thus is threatened with poverty might have moral concerns over it, but he can brush that aside and see that this way he can continue employing those other 10, and if he didn't lay off the one, the company might lose profit and cut the whole branch, making 12 people (ie the 11 and him) lose their jobs. The top management might even have moral concerns, but they can shift the blame on the investors who want first and foremost money for their investment, and the managers are responsible that this money is well invested money. The investors in turn don't even know what they invest in, they just hand money to their bank, trusting the bank to multiply that money. And the investors working at a bank might even know that a company is doing "evil things", but they have to put their moral concerns aside, they have promised their customers to do the best investments they could so they have to invest in the "evil" company, because it's the most profitable one. Everyone can shift the blame on someone and morals don't play a role anymore, even if they did for a single person, the moment you can shift it on someone else, it's all fine, after all, you don't do evil, you're forced to, by the circumstances.
Because he sent out spam emails and didn't care that he got on your nerves? By that logic, every cold calling CCA is also a self centered bastard who's ready to pop any second. And yes, they're annoying as hell (maybe more than even spammers), but that doesn't make them more likely to go on killing sprees than the average Joe. I fail to see the connection between being a spammer and being a murder-suicide in the making. Does that mean we will leap at each other's throat the moment we spot each other? Usually, people don't care too much about people they don't know.
I agree this guy was a complete selfish asshole, but you're treading on dangerous ground here. There aren't two different types of people: "criminals" and "non-criminals". Someone being a criminal doesn't make them morally corrupt and somehow more able to commit murder/suicide. With the ways the laws are lately, we're pretty much all criminals. That doesn't make us any more or less likely to do something insane like this. What this guy did was a not uncommon response to his type of situation. There are psychological factors at work that we should work to understand instead of dismissing this as just the actions of a criminal and sweeping them under the rug. It's similar to our reaction to the Columbine shootings. When someone does something that far off from our own moral compass we label them as the Other. They were "monsters" and that's how they did what they did. Identifying them as monsters doesn't do anything constructive to prevent similar tragedies in future.
Journal It isn't just prison, but institutionalization in general. Once upon a time, I was put into a "mental health facility" (loony bin) after a drawn out period where I started seeing spiders coming at me in all directions (an extreme phobia of mine). Today, we have found out that this condition only emerges when I don't sleep at least 6 hours a night, and stress contriubutes largely to my ability to sleep. Well, about a day into this place, I was literally going nuts. They took away your shoes and most common clothing, where most of us had to wear a hospital gown... the place was at a constant 60 degrees F There was one hallway... I never did either before I went there, but when the coffee cart came out, you grabbed one. I started coming up with games to play with myself around the place to try and keep what sanity I had left. I got locked into solitary for playing "Die Hard" and being too "loud and obnoxious, which stirs up the other patients" I was told. The first visitation from my wife I was allowed to have, I had her get a lawyer and get me the hell out of there.
Journal I was not self-admitted, else I could have signed an AMA (Against Medical Advice) waiver and gotten out. I had been working 16+ hour days at work for a month and I was cracking hard. I was actually doing a paid research study for people with psychosis, and I was doing a test in an MRI machine. The spiders started coming out of every crack and I couldn't move, obviously. I couldn't help but panic and I trashed and screamed, everything I could do to get out of there away from the spiders/ They had me admitted because I was "a probable danger to myself and others". I also have to add this little bit, because it is hard for people to comprehend situations like this if they never have experienced it... When you have a psychotic episode, you can not tell it isn't real. You can even try and reason with yourself that "This can't possibly be happening", but ultimately, every other part of your brain is telling you it is.
"I'm the only thing that matters to my family, so they're better off dead." I know some people here will celebrate the spammers death, but I would have rather seen him in a 8x10 cell.
Not as good, but tolerable: dead by his own hand, family alive. Absolutely horrible: him dead with wife and his 3 year old child. As a father of 3, I cannot fathom what drives a person to do that to their own child. An adult can create conflict that may drive you to retaliate.
Journal I think the whole killing of his wife is a bit over the top and goes to show how he truly was a monster with no morals. He could have just killed himself and done us all a favor.
Who goes to all the trouble to escape jail so they can kill themselves when they succeed? It's not...
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