Mental Illness Or Evil Or Both – Parents Who Kill Their Children

By Major Van Harl

Wisconsin –-(Ammoland.com)- It was Friday morning, 6:30 am, on the first of January 2016.

I had just come out the back door to let Wanda Sue, my dog, out when I spotted police crime scene tape. Thirty five plus years in law enforcement and my personal involvement in dead body crime scenes, I knew someone was dead.

I walked back in the house and mentioned to my mother-in-law what I thought was going on, and she told me it was a murder-suicide.

Of course I looked at her strange wondering how she knew, but it was already on the news.

I did not know at first what had happened, but then the very sad news was released that a twenty seven year old father had killed his two year old daughter and then himself. He shot the baby and then shot himself.

Somehow the coward could not manage to do his evil work the other way round.

On the internet I found an alleged bankruptcy and the dead man’s name listed with eleven home addresses in his short life. The mother who was not harmed did not appear to have the same name as the father and the child. He had, very shortly before he murdered the baby, been on the internet telling the world he was going to have a bad year.

A family member on the mother’s side was on TV telling the listeners that the father (daddy-evil) had on numerous occasions talked about suicide—but hey, he talked that way quite often, so nothing new there. The baby was supposed to have a three year old birthday two days after the New Year; instead they held a memorial visitation at the child’s home.  There were, and still are, the obligatory stuffed animals, candles and balloons on the front porch of the murder-site home.

When I was with the Wichita Falls, Texas police department I was involved in a residential crime scene that had multiple suicides. There was this nice little middle class family, where dad calls his young daughter to come set on his lap. While he is talking to his child he pulls out a handgun and blows his brains out, but not before telling the daughter it is all her fault. Screwed up mom becomes a pen pal with a convicted felon who is still in prison. Only days after getting out of prison he moves in with the widow. Then after weeks of less than normal sex between the widow and the ex-con (lots of pictures found later) there were accusations of child abuse. The ex-con allegedly goes on the run, and widow and children move to another location for safety.

Enter me, with fellow police officers going into the home with a search warrant, only to discover the ex-con is hiding in the house and later shoots himself, rather than go back to prison. Two suicides, one home, no dead baby, but two very, screwed up children, most likely for life. Oh, and I came literally within inches of having a bullet put into me.

Parents kill their children. This is why we have the word infanticide–this is why babies instinctively turn away from strange men. We used to say that people who kill their children are bad. Now we have to dig deep into the murdering parent’s life to find out just what made that poor misunderstood person (mom or dad) harm that baby. It is not harm, call it what it is, evil directed murder.

As John Wayne said “life is hard and it’s harder if you’re stupid” but it is even harder on children when one parent is stupid and the other one is evil. Approximately 450 children are murdered in the US every year by their parents. Men tend to kill more children than women, but women kill the little babies more often.

Why do people feel that when their lives are no longer fit to continue that they have to take other lives with them, I do not understand?

This sick idea that humans, meaning children and mothers of these children are somehow the property of men escapes me. Why, when a parent has come to the point their life no longer has value they feel the child’s life no longer has value also? And, just why in the hell, that child most accompany the murdering parent to the grave, is beyond me?

Marriage before children and the ability to actually successfully nurture, support and raise a child goes a long way in keeping children from harm by the parents. If you do not want your life or your children, than give the kids up—there is always someone who will take that child and keep them safer than you, the potentially murdering parent, ever will.

There is a much warmer place in hell for a person who forcibly holds his baby down, puts a gun to the face of that child and pulls the trigger. It is evil and I do not care about the alleged mental sickness or bad childhood of the killing daddy or mommy.

Major Van Harl USAF Ret.
[email protected]

About Major Van Harl USAF Ret.:Major Van E. Harl USAF Ret., a career Police Officer in the U.S. Air Force was born in Burlington, Iowa, USA, in 1955. He was the Deputy Chief of police at two Air Force Bases and the Commander of Law Enforcement Operations at another. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Infantry School.  A retired Colorado Ranger and currently is an Auxiliary Police Officer with the Cudahy PD in Milwaukee County, WI.  His efforts now are directed at church campus safely and security training.  He believes “evil hates organization.”  [email protected]