One sign that this economic hole we’re in is not your father’s (or your grandfather’s) Great Depression: Those iconic stories of ruined investors leaping from windows have been replaced with something much more contemporary—wives and children
slaughtered by their
cash-strapped, suicidal husbands and fathers.
More pro-active desperation? Despondent men more likely to be heavily armed these days? Taking a few people with you as the new normal?
Whatever it is, there’s a new-look form of paternalism here. Experts think these guys actually believe they’re doing "what's best" for their families—sparing them the humiliation of financial hardship and a dad who's cashing out. They’re like dog owners who demand in their wills that their pets be put down because no one could possibly fill their shoes. "Why leave our children in someone else's hands?" one of these “family annihilators” actually wondered
in a note found with his body and the corpses of
six family members.
(AP Photo)
These are not the enraged “payback” killers who stalk estranged girlfriends and divorcing wives, or men driven to hurt their wives by murdering their offspring. And they’re not like women who drown their youngsters because they think they’re possessed by the devil.
These killers seem to be fueled by an inability to see their loved ones as existing apart from themselves. Or maybe they feel more guilty about their financial failure than the victims of the ’29 crash and can’t bear the thought of their significant others finding out about whatever smoke-and-mirrors (if not Ponzi) scheme they were up to.
They aren’t even necessarily guys with a record of being household tyrants. They usually appear to be devoted dads, tend to be loners, and are control freaks. The murders are almost invariably carefully planned and
methodically executed. In the words of domestic violence experts: “The despondent killer bizarrely construes homicide as protection, apparently believing that his victims could not persist or cope in his absence, and feels entitled to decide his victims' fate."
Where does this grandiosity come from? Another side effect of Wall Street (
which got its grandiosity from Hollywood) taking over Main Street? It's a baffling fact of this domestic terrorism that men destroy what could be their greatest comfort in distress and source of pleasure when professional success evaporates: their partners and their own children.
Makes you wish they'd just find an open window.
