Mother Kills Son And Daughter For Being 'Mouthy'

[goodboy]

Source: Associated Press

TAMPA, Fla. — The woman who authorities say killed her teenage daughter and son because she was fed up with them talking back and being mouthy will not appear in court Saturday because she's being treated at a hospital for an unknown condition.

Authorities say Julie Powers Schenecker was taken to Tampa General Hospital shortly after midnight Saturday to be treated for a medical condition that existed before she was taken to jail. Hillsborough Sheriff's deputies – who oversee jail inmates – said they could not reveal Schenecker's medical condition, citing health care privacy laws.

An arrest affidavit said Schenecker shot her son twice in the head in the family car "for talking back" as she drove him to soccer practice. The report said Schenecker then drove to their upscale home and shot her daughter in the face inside the home.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/29/mom-charged-in-kids-slayi_n_815769.html

---

If the kids were armed they could've prevented this right? So we need more guns, and this should in no way spark a gun control debate.

[Dennis Donovan]

1. Thank god that wasn't MY mom...

I'd be toast!:D

[SharonAnn]

21. Amen! When asked, my mom said her greatest accomplishment was that I grew up

and wasn't killed when younger (by her).

I think I was pretty much a mouthy brat. I'm ashamed of that, now.

[maxsolomon]

2. Without a gun for personal protection from lippy children,

would she have stabbed them instead?

A handgun makes bad choices easy to make.

[Katya Mullethov]

15. No one would ever go to the trouble of drowning them one at a time

Or strapping their car seats in and sending her car off a boat ramp drowning both of them at the same time . That's just fucking nuts .

[May Hamm]

54. Um... you can't really do that with teenagers. n/t

[shadowrider]

60. Ummmm, yes you can

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CAMPUS_STRANGLING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-02-01-14-38-56

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- A woman who said she strangled her 18-year-old daughter because she "pushed my last button" pleaded guilty Tuesday to first-degree manslaughter.

Her husband, who discovered the body, wept during the court session.

Stacy Pagli, 38, had been charged with murder in the Feb. 22 killing of her daughter Marissa at Manhattanville College in Purchase.

=======

Strangled her, with her bare hands. 18 years old. Don't tell me it can't be done.

At least a gun wasn't used, then the 18 year old would be really, really dead.

[May Hamm]

61. So be sarcastic and snide.

You are not so stupid that you can't see how a gun makes murder more possible than if there were no gun. Do you really think that she could have strangled her 13 year old son fighting for his life?

You KNOW. This other stuff is just crap because you are having fun arguing.

[shadowrider]

63. Wait. You said it couldn't happen. I showed it could and I'm being sarcastic and snide?

Methinks you didn't care being proven wrong.

If the 13 year old was sleeping and she strangled him, yes, it can be done relatively easily.

[May Hamm]

53. "A handgun makes bad choices easy to make" Exactly. n/t

[Euromutt]

55. Except apparently she made the decision days in advance

She even obligingly left a note lying around to that effect.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/01/us-tampa-murders-idUSTRE71079Y20110201

[May Hamm]

56. So?

So what?

The bad decision she made was to kill her children. The handgun made this bad decision possible.

I don't know what else to say. What difference does it make when she made the decision? Why does it matter when she wrote her intent?

[Euromutt]

57. The killings were premeditated, SO she had time and opportunity to prepare

If she hadn't had a firearm available, she would have found some other means of committing the murders. Your claim that "the handgun made this bad decision possible" suffers from the same flaw as the argument that if Loughner hadn't had extended magazines for his handgun, he wouldn't have killed as many people, that flaw being that it assumes that all other factors would be equal, and that murderers don't tailor their plans to the means they can get.

You're implicitly assuming that, absent the handgun, she wouldn't have been able to murder her kids; given that ~1/3 of murders in the United States are committed by means other than a firearm, that's an insupportable assumption. The Japanese language has a specific term for a domestic murder-suicide, muri-shinju (lit. "forced suicide"), and these occur about daily (http://www.glocom.org/special_topics/social_trends/20040107_trends_s65/index.html), in spite of the fact that it's extremely difficult to acquire a firearm as a private citizen in Japan. (As an aside, a dirty secret about Japanese statistics is that all victims of a muri-shinju are counted as suicides, which goes some way to explaining how the official Japanese homicide rate is so low, and the suicide rate so high.)

This woman had decided to murder her kids. Given that she had the gun available, she could have done it the moment she'd made that decision. But instead, she waited for several days, during which times, she could readily have acquired other means to commit the murders. Maybe it would have taken her a few more days. But it wasn't the gun that made her do it, and there's no reason to assume that without the gun, she wouldn't have done it.

[May Hamm]

58. If you had no gun, how would you kill two teenagers?

It's not that easy to kill two adult size people. I don't assume that without the gun she wouldn't have done it. But all the fussing in the world doesn't cover the fact that the gun made killing easy. Easier than any other way.

I am against registering guns. I think background checks are useless. I think requiring ID to purchase 22 shells to plink at cans floating down the river accomplishes nothing. (The three day waiting period for handguns may not be bad though, just saying.)

I don't want gun control, but I'm not blind. I can see how guns make some crime easy enough to commit where without a gun it might not happen.

This mom is mentally ill. Too many people think mental illness is just a lying excuse to get away with murder. When we change that attitude, when we begin to look for and treat mental illness like any other debilitating illness then we may accomplish something. Accomplish a lot more than registering guns will.

[Euromutt]

64. I can think of a few ways, especially if you're not concerned with getting away with it

About three years ago, there was a rash of suicides in Japan by gassing; specifically, with hydrogen sulfide gas, created by mixing toilet cleaner and bath salts. Get some of that going while they're asleep, and that might do the trick.

If you can catch them separately and unawares (which, in fact, is what the woman did), I don't see why a kitchen knife wouldn't work, or some bludgeon like a baseball bat, hockey stick or pipe wrench, or even a garrotte fashioned from piano wire and a couple of wooden handles.

Sure, maybe it's easier to physically perform this sort of killing with a firearm, but speaking as a parent, I can only imagine that the biggest obstacle has got to be the psychological one of killing your own children. Once you've overcome that, any possible obstacle presented by certain means being available or unavailable has got to be trivial by comparison.

<...> when we begin to look for and treat mental illness like any other debilitating illness then we may accomplish something. Accomplish a lot more than registering guns will.

There, I think you're entirely correct.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. Crazy person kills children, weapon clearly caused it.

After all, we passed legislation preventing moms from drowning their kids after the last one, right?

[abelenkpe]

4. weapon made it easy for her to act in heat of the moment

a tragedy that might not have happened otherwise.

[LAGC]

32. Not with the daughter it wasn't.

It was clearly premeditated.

[Euromutt]

36. Popular (mis)perception notwithstanding, VERY few homicides take place "in the heat of the moment"

The whole vocabulary of someone "snapping" or being taken by "the heat of the moment" and committing a "crime of passion" is essentially so much garbage. They're terms cooked up by the murderers themselves to pretend their crimes weren't premeditated (which would raise the charge from 2nd degree murder to 1st degree murder), and perpetuated unquestioningly by the news media and friends, family and neighbors who don't want to blame themselves for failing to intervene. It's become "common knowledge" merely by being repeated often enough.

As far criminological evidence indicates, murders that occur without premeditation are generally committed by people who already have an extensive prior history of violent behavior.

[DissedByBush]

40. Driving home to shoot the daughter

was in the heat of the moment?

[Euromutt]

51. How about the note she wrote several days before the shootings stating her intent?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/01/us-tampa-murders-idUSTRE71079Y20110201

"Heat of the moment" my achin' ass.

[sharesunited]

6. No, the weapon didn't cause it. Her access to a weapon caused it.

[jeepnstein]

25. I'm betting mental illness caused it.

She just happened to use a gun instead of a knife, baseball bat, poison, microwave oven, wood chipper, or power drill. It's a tragedy.

[Katya Mullethov]

26. As my colleagues may have observed

There have been a great many that have shown outright scorn for the" gun fetishists " .
And although I proudly call myself a hoplophiliac and mounted ,black powder CAS (Cowboy Acrobat Sex) afficionado . I do not take this as a slight . Not considering that one of the definitions of fetishism is the bestowing of magical powers on an object . The constant cries of "Fetishists vile !" and"Guns caused !" appear to me as projection of one's own fetishism . These cats believe that firearms are magical objects that somehow talk to and instruct their gun fetish owners .

I call mine Sam .

[russspeakeasy]

5. Not all the crazies live in Florida, but we have our more than our share.

[sharesunited]

7. And a state government which has no problem letting people walk around with guns.

[spin]

11. To find out just how many of those people have been a problem ...

simply look at this monthly report on concealed carry in Florida.

http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/stats/cw_monthly.html

To sum it up, in the twenty three year period of time between 10/1/87 to 12/31/10, Florida issued 1,902,769 concealed weapons permits. 780,595 are currently valid. Only 168 licenses have been revolked for a crime involving a firearm that was committed after the license was issued.

In 1987, when Florida enacted such legislation, critics warned that the "Sunshine State" would become the "Gunshine State." Contrary to their predictions, homicide rates dropped faster than the national average. Further, through 1997, only one permit holder out of the over 350,000 permits issued, was convicted of homicide. (Source: Kleck, Gary Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, p 370. Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York, 1997.) If the rest of the country behaved as Florida's permit holders did, the U.S. would have the lowest homicide rate in the world.

David Kopel, Research Director at the Independence Institute comments on Florida's concealed carry experience:

"What we can say with some confidence is that allowing more people to carry guns does not cause an increase in crime. In Florida, where 315,000 permits have been issued, there are only five known instances of violent gun crime by a person with a permit. This makes a permit-holding Floridian the cream of the crop of law-abiding citizens, 840 times less likely to commit a violent firearm crime than a randomly selected Floridian without a permit." ("More Permits Mean Less Crime..." Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 1996, Monday, p. B-5)
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgcon.html

[PavePusher]

29. That would be...

Oh yeah, most of them. And growing.

[houstonintc]

8. I hope she feels good inside...

You know, she definitely... established her authority over her kids.

She just decided to ruin her family and likely reek untold emotional damage on her husband/ the father of the kids.

But hey.... at least she responded swiftly and aggressively to a child challenging her authority.

[RSillsbee]

22. It's wreak

just sayin'

[revolution breeze]

9. I noticed her husband is deployed.

It is so hard when your spouse is deployed and you have to maintain normalcy, while fearing every day you could become a widow/widower. I am not excusing her behavior in the least, I just think this backs up my beleif that military families don't get enough support while their loved ones put their lives on the line. It is only when a loved one comes home in a coffin that we pay any attention to military spouses. How very, very sad and imagine what this news is going to do to that poor soldier who is probably nearing retirement and was preparing for life at home with his family (buying the house).

[udbcrzy2]

10. She should have kept her end of the deal to shoot herself dead.

She should have done that first. Wonder why she changed her mind about her suicide? At least she could of done suicide by cop if she couldn't pull the trigger. That woman is an evil bitch.

[Codeine]

12. Guns are never going to go away in America,

so you lot might as well let the incessant whining and mining of tragedy to advance your agenda go. The only thing the anti-gun agenda has ever done is lose elections for our side. It's a losing issue and will continue be so for the foreseeable future.

And for the record I don't own a working firearm. I have an old Soviet WW2 rifle which I've never bothered to fire and for which I don't own ammunition; it's just an old bit of history. Not a gun nut, just a fan of our Bill of Rights in its entirety.

[shadowrider]

14. If you ever decide to sell that Soviet WW2 rifle, keep me in mind n/t

[Codeine]

18. Can't sell such a pretty wall-hanger!

Actually, it's a really badly-made specimen, but it has a very strong appeal. That machine fought fascists.

[shadowrider]

19. Dang. Well, if you ever change your mind n/t

[RSillsbee]

23. Well if you're ever in Colorado

And you you'd like a chance to go shooting let me know

[Callisto32]

16. A Mosin-Nagant, perchance?

[shadowrider]

17. HEY, I have first dibs in case you didn't notice n/t

[Codeine]

20. Yep, a really slapped-together one.

At a certain point they were shoving them out the door so fast that there was zero finishing of parts. A wonder it fires at all, honestly (assuming it still would.)

[oneshooter]

31. If they didn't work, the pig-sticker on the front did.. n/t

[beevul]

27. One minor point of inaccuracy.

"The only thing the anti-gun agenda has ever done is lose elections for our side."

Its also made popular and "sold" one hell of a lot of guns.


Generally, I agree with you though. :toast:

[Tesha]

37. Republicans, the Religious Reich, and environmental destruction don't appear to be going either.

Shall we abandon our fight against those as well?

Or just your hobby horse, guns?

Tesha

[shadowrider]

13. And if these people had guns, they could have defended themselves

Nigeria Massacre Of 500 Villagers: 93 People Arrested Over Machete Killings

http://politifi.com/news/Nigeria-Massacre-Of-500-Villagers-93-People-Arrested-Over-Machete-Killings-261844.html

Any outrage over this or is it relatively ok because guns weren't used?

[shadowrider]

24. No outrage yet. Very telling n/t

[PavePusher]

28. Unrec for your stupid commentary.

Did you set that Strawman(tm) up all by yourself, or did you hire out the heavy lifting?

Flame-bait, much?

[Khan Descend]

30. Exodus 21:17

It's very clear on this point. :shrug:

[cleanhippie]

33. Does anyone but anti-2A people make the rediculous argument you are trying to make?

Nope, its just you. Epic fail.

[lynne]

34. The weapon should not be the focus. The reason for the act should be the focus.

The longer we try to blame an object for the actions of an individual, the longer it will take us to address the real problem. Mental Health. Identifying and helping those who are mentally ill. THAT is the problem, not what weapon was used. The children would still be just as dead if she had used a knife, a bat, or drowned them.

[Euromutt]

35. Quite so

Very well put.

[Tesha]

38. That's right. *EVERYONE* should have access to a means of dealing swift, speedy death to another.

And the means of death should be almost impossible to
defend against when used suddenly, and offer no hope
of recall if used in haste, or anger, or a fleeting
moment of insanity.

It will be a much better country when everyone has
such means at their disposal.

Tesha

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

43. You need to improve your reading comprehension.

that's not what he wrote or advocated.

[Tesha]

44. You need to have your sarcasm/satire detector calibrated immediately.

But what I suggested is, in fact, the end-point
of the world the pro-gun people advocate for.

And when it is unambiguously accomplished (which
won't be long now), you'll decide you don't like
it any better then than I do now.

Tesha

[Khan Descend]

47. If, as you say, your suggestion was serious, it wasn't satire.

:eyes:

[Euromutt]

49. "Fleeting moment of insanity"? You buy into such a notion?

I think that illustrates the thinking fundamental to gun control advocacy: a sincere belief that people with little or no prior history of violent behavior can turn homicidal in an instant, and that not denying them firearms will thus negatively affect public safety.

Sincere, but no less misguided for all that. The notion of people suddenly "snapping" and becoming murderous is a myth, doctored up by criminal defendants who wanted to pretend (for obvious reasons) that there was no premeditation to their acts, and perpetuated by the news media, pop psychologists and friends, family and neighbors who don't want to blame themselves for failing to intervene when they spotted the warning signs.

[May Hamm]

59. You appear to know nothing about mental illness.

"who don't want to blame themselves for failing to intervene when they spotted the warning signs."

Ninety nine percent of the time friends or family may see the signs, understand there is a problem, yet have absolutely no reason to believe that a MURDER is in the works. And why should they? It makes no sense to assume the extremely worst possibility will occur because 99% of the time mental illness does not result in murder.

Gads but I lose patience with those who think they would spot "warning signs" right off and they would know exactly where to go and what to do. Geez! Most of the time those "warning signs" aren't there or simply are not severe enough for anyone, however close, to think the person will murder her children.

[Euromutt]

52. And as it turns out, she planned the killing days in advance

She even went to the courtesy of leaving a note.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/01/us-tampa-murders-idUSTRE71079Y20110201

So much for "haste, anger, or a fleeting moment of insanity."

[slackmaster]

39. Stupid Straw Man is still a stupid Straw Man

If the kids were armed they could've prevented this right? So we need more guns, and this should in no way spark a gun control debate.

No, only an utter fool would say something like that.

N&U

:nuke:

[oneshooter]

41. Wrong, there are some idiots out there that say it also. n/t

[slackmaster]

42. OK, maybe I was a bit hasty there.

I've seen it said by some verifiable dumb-asses.

[Tesha]

45. Where in the very absolute language of the Second Amendment does it say that...

...the rights contained there-in *DON'T* apply
to children, the mentally incompetent, felons,
and the like?

Tesha

[Name removed]

46. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TPaine7]

48. The part about convicted felons is in two other places in the Constitution:

Fifth Amendment:

...nor shall any person be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...


Fourteenth Amendment:

...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...

The Fifth restricts the federal government; the Fourteenth restricts the states. With due process of law, government may deprive a convicted felon of rights by imprisoning him, fining him, stripping him of his right to keep and bear arms, or even executing him.

As to the incompetent bearing arms, all declared rights are subject to well established preexisting legal limits. This is why, for instance, the First Amendment's free exercise clause does not authorize human sacrifice. It is also why infants and the severely retarded don't get to carry guns.

If you are interested, I've gone into more detail here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=369553&mesg_id=370192

Feel free to join in.

I hope this helps answer your questions.

[RamboLiberal]

50. I saw the Nightline report on this case last night

You could see in the video this woman clearly had mental problems. In fact the family had in the past gone to Al-Anon meetings to deal with her drinking & drug problems. The father who is a colonel in Army intelligence IMHO should've left the military if he couldn't avoid being deployed. He clearly needed to be there and I think he knew his wife had mental health issues. She had purchased the gun recently.

Sad, but if it wasn't the gun I think she'd have found another way to kill the kids.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

62. My dad never wanted to shoot me for being mouthy

Strangle, maybe, but never shoot.