Julie Schenecker from Tampa, Florida was jailed for murdering her two teenage children, Calyx (16) and Beau (13) for talking back to her. Shenecker's children were shot in the head. She left a note with her plan, which was to kill her children then take her own life, showing that she planned this murder and it was not a murder done in the heat of the moment. However, in the end, she did not end up killing herself. Her husband, a US army colonel, was on deployment out of the country when this happened. He came to his Tampa home on Monday, grieving and mourning the loss of his two children. Schenecker admitted to the murders and defended herself saying that her children were talking back to her. She is now in the Tampa jail, held without bail.
This was really saddening to read. As teenagers, it's common to talk back to your parents. Actually even as adults, people still continue to talk back to their parents. To act in such a violent and irresponsible way is unacceptable. I don't know what Schenecker was trying to prove a point to other teenagers out there, but this PLANNED murder is absolutely crazy. Just the fact that she would do this to her own children for such a trivial reason is horrible. Even if she and her children were arguing over something serious (there was no evidence of what they were fighting over), it stills does not justify her actions.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
It's unfortunate that all of this turned out the way it did. Talking back to your parent, maybe warrants a little scolding but certainly not death.
The mother obviously had some deep seated anger/psychological issues. In fact, three months before Schenecker murdered her two children, she had been investigated for slapping her daugher, Calyx, in the face for being so- called "disrespectful". The Florida Department of Children and Families investigation report stated, at the time, that "the overall risk to the children at this time is low".
I agree with you, Michelle, nothing can or could validate the actions of the mother and she should be severely punished for them. To do something like this to anyone, let alone your own kids, is a horrendous and atrocious act. My condolences and prayers go out to their mourning family.
Wow! I don't know what was going through Schenecker's head. But I believe she is defending her action that she shot them because they were talking back, but I can easily find a flaw in her argument (even though it is a really weak one). She said she shot them from her anger of her teenagers talking back, but theres evidence that she had planned on killing them for a while now. I can't believe someone would hate their own children so much they would murder them. I feel so sorry for the daughter's friends and family, especially the dad. A soldier shouldn't be coming home to grieving his daughter's death from their own mother. I wonder why this happens a lot in our nation but not as much in other countries.
Maybe she wanted to be an over the top "Tiger Mom." (Sarcasm intended.)
I cannot believe this woman did this to her children. I honestly cannot believe how crazy people are nowadys! It amazes me how people react to certain things that go on in their lives. I definitely think that killing her children was not the right way for Schenecker to deal with her children's talking back attitude.
I hope this woman gets a fair punishment for the crime she committed. I hope the father of the children can deal with this difficult situation in his life at the moment and get through it.
This is absolutely horrendous. It seems to me that this mother cannot be mentally stable, and brings up the question of gun laws.
Firstly, to plan the murder of your own children to me shows something severely wrong with the mother. I wanted to see if she had been found mentally unstable, and some of the videos I watched of the newscast showed footage of Julie Schenecker being taken into custody. She is trembling in all these shots and, as the announcer describes, "appear[s] to be a very disturbed woman" (http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/mother-accused-killing-children-12793060). This clearly shows how unstable she is mentally now, after the killings, and I suspect she was mentally unstable beforehand as well. Also, an article by The Examiner says that she did have a history of depression and mental illness, and had been treated for them a few times in the last 10 years (http://www.examiner.com/media-culture-in-national/gun-waiting-period-delayed-julie-schencker-plan-to-kill-suicide-foiled-by-cops).
I find it incredibly scary that this mentally unstable woman was able to buy a gun and commit such an atrocious act against her children. Aren't gun laws supposed to prevent this kind of thing? We deal with this issue of the mentally ill obtaining guns and wreaking havoc repeatedly, and have seen it in the recent Virgina Tech Massacre and Arizona shooting. Yes, Bush did sign into law a gun regulation aimed at stopping mentally ill people from buying guns, but in recent cases, as in this one, it is not doing its job (to read more about the gun law go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/08/AR2008010803752.html). Depression is a mental illness, and therefore this mother should have been prevented from buying a gun. It is just another extremely tragic reminder of the horrendous consequences of what happens when mentally ill or unstable people are allowed access to guns.
Having said this, I don't think her mental illness lets her rid herself of the blame from this case. Her mental illness was depression, and while it does alter brain chemistry and the ability to think clearly, I don't believe it is as serious as, say, schizophrenia. This is her fault, and I find it sad that she is mentally ill, but I feel this awful incident is obviously inexcusable.
-Alice Bebbington
What's shocking to me is not the fact that she killed her own children merely because they were talking back to her, but that she planned this murder?! So in a sense, couldn't this mean she instigated this situation, waiting for the moment when her kids would talk back to her so she just could shoot them in the head?
What's really sad is that what kind of mother is she that she wouldn't want to teach her children in the loving, "motherly" way that talking back to your parents is never right. Because she resulted to violence, she never gave her children a chance to learn how to mature. They were only 16 and 13 years old, one in the midst of his teenage years and one just entering puberty. Every kid talks about to their parents at this age; what if every mother or father acted like how Schenecker did? That would be terrible on so many levels. I'm glad she's in jail.
Post a Comment