John List: Time to start a new life.

This crime has the distinction of being the first crime to give me nightmares.

There were two things which disturbed me about this crime - the crime scene as the cops found it must have been horrific; and that he managed to spend 19 years on the run after he killed his whole family. But let's start at the beginning.

John List was a respectable married man with three teenage children. He lived in a huge old three storey Victorian mansion, called "Breeze Knoll", with his family and his elderly mother, who had lent him the money to buy the house.

Things were not as they seem however - John List had lost his job and was almost bankrupt.

Using very fucked up logic, John List says he decided that the Bible said that poverty was a sin, so therefore he needed to kill his family before they became poor, and thus sinners. Using a gun, he killed his mother and his wife during the day, and waited for his children to come home from school, killing them as soon as they walked into the house. John, the middle child, had soccer practice, so List went and picked him up, brought him home and executed him.

As he killed each member of his family, he laid the bodies next to each other in the ballroom in a row, except for his mother who was too heavy to carry downstairs. He then wrote some letters to the school and his pastor, turned on all the lights, turned down the thermostat, tuned the radio to his favourite station, and left.

He was not seen again for almost two decades.

The neighbours called police after about a month. Imagine yourself as one of those New Jersey cops walking into that scene: Three story Victorian mansion; lights have been burning for weeks, and now the only light left on is on the second floor, casting a dim light over the rest of the house; the huge empty rooms filled with John List's favourite solemn classical music; the discovery of the row of bodies in the ballroom, and one upstairs; the smell.

John List changed his name, remarried and started a new life, with hardly a thought to the lives he had taken.  His new life was undone thanks to the Television Show "America's most wanted" doing a story on the case.  Someone recognised him, and the jig was up.

What bothers me is his psycho-pathology. How could you kill you entire family, including your three children, walk away and carry on like nothing happened for almost twenty years. No guilt. No remorse. No feelings.

Now that's just scary.

Source
Crime Library

The plot thickens

It has emerged in the media (and here) this morning that Keisha had an older brother, Aiden, who died from SIDS in 2002.   Police will now be investigating Aiden's death.  It will be interesting to see what the investigation reveals.   

What happened to Keisha?

Keisha Abrahams

Six year old Keisha Abrahams was reported missing from her Sydney home last Sunday morning, August 1st, after her mother discovered her missing from her bed and the front door slightly ajar.  There was no sign of forced entry.  There were reports of abduction flying around in the media.  Her mother and step father suggested she may have wandered out to play with the local stray cats, which she liked to do, and someone had taken her.  Keisha had last been seen the night before, by her mother Kristi Abrahams.  Or at least that is the story Kristi has told the police and media.

Robert Smith and Kristi Abrahams

In the course of the last week it has emerged that Keisha may not have been seen by anyone other than her mother or step father for as long as a month.  She had not been to school.  Keisha was also known to child protective services and other government agencies due to her troubled home life.  She was taken to hospital at about 18 months of age with a severe bite wound.  A human bite wound. An adult human bite wound.  Initially it was reported as confidential who the biter was, but a news service published the information on Thursday.  Keisha had been bitten by her mother.  And yet Kristi Abrahams is proclaiming "Stop judging me" to the media.

Kristi Abrahams has given birth to a son in the past couple of weeks.  It makes me wonder if maybe Keisha was going to be in the way for this new family, and needed to be removed. 

Keisha's step father Robert Smith has stated loudly in the media that the police believe he is a suspect and have said to him "just tell us where her body is".  Apparently we are meant to be outraged that the police asked him this.  Personally I am just outraged that a six year old girl has been allowed to disappear without a trace. 

Links 1 2

Mothers who kill again and again

While I do not contest the existence of SIDS and other horrible genetic thingys which take the lives of little humans, I fail to see how four children, aged between a few weeks and three and a half years, can all die without warning. Children do not just die of congential defects. There are symptoms, warning of their impending fate. There is even some evidence that symptoms can be seen in SIDS babies, at least in hindsight.

It's one of those things which I simply find unbelievable. How could you kill your own children? Tiny babies. Again and again? Marybeth Tinning and Kathleen Folbigg did it.

Here are Marybeth and Kathleen's stories:

Marybeth Tinning

She looks evil even in photos.

The staff at the local emergency department were very familiar with Marybeth. She would come in with one of her children in her arms, dead or dying. Some hated her, some pitied her. Over 13 years 9 children of Marybeth's died.

One child, Jennifer, died of an infection. She was the first Tinning child to die. Doctors would blame genetic heart defects, SIDS, an unidentified genetic disorder for the other deaths. This had to be thrown into question when Michael died. Michael was Marybeth's fifth child. He was also adopted. Yet authorities did not question the Tinning children's deaths for many more years, not until after the death of her ninth child, Tami Lynne. Not until eight innocent children had lost their lives at the hands of their mother.

Marybeth eventually admitted to smothering her children. Her husband Joe seems to have not particularly cared either way - he couldn't even remember some of the childrens' names.

For Marybeth the motive seems to have been Munchausens by Proxy - she liked the attention given to a grieving mother. She enjoyed it after Jennifer died, so she thought she would repeat it. Again and again.

She was only charged with the death of Tami Lynne, as there was not enough evidence in the other cases.

Kathleen Folbigg



Kathleen Folbigg's first child Caleb died in February 1989, at just 20 days old. The official cause of death was SIDS.

Patrick Folbigg managed to live to be six months old before he too succumbed to SIDS. Sarah Folbigg made it to 11 months before SIDS claimed her life too. Laura lived even longer - she made it to 19 months. But she was too old for SIDS. The coroner referred the case to the police.

After Laura's death Kathleen and Craig Folbigg separated. Kathleen left many of her belongings behind. While cleaning up, Craig found a diary. Which, when he read it's contents, made him "want to vomit".

Kathleen felt neglected when the babies came along - the attention had shifted from her to the baby, and she didn't like it. It was like some morbid jealousy. She also had a furious temper, that she would take out on the baby if they did not do as she wished. She wrote in her diary of Laura:

"She's a fairly good-natured baby - thank goodness, it has saved her from the fate of her siblings. I'm sure she's met everyone and they've told her, don't be a bad or sickly kid, mum may, you know, crack. They've warned her - good."

During the police investigation, it emerged that Kathleen's father had killed her mother. Kathleen went to an orphanage and was adopted. Maybe it was in the genes. She wrote in her diary "Maybe I am my father's daughter".

Maybe she is just a selfish, selfish woman who should never have had children.

Read about Kathleen here and Marybeth here.

John Myles Sharpe - "The Mornington Monster"

John Myles Sharpe

John Myles Sharpe is one of the most callous killers Melbourne has ever seen. The community at large could not help but wonder - how can a man who looks so "normal" not just kill his wife, but his unborn child and two year old daughter? And not just kill them, but brutally murder them.

Here's a synopsis:

John Sharpe had been with Anna Kemp for a decade. They had met at the Commonwealth Bank where they both worked. They married in 1994 and had a daughter in 2002, Gracie, who was born with hip dysplacia which Anna tenderly nursed her through. When Gracie was about 15 months old, Anna fell pregnant again.

John decided that he did not want another child - one was enough of a burden. Even though he had agreed to have more children, he began to resent Anna and the baby in her womb. Without Anna knowing (I hope) John started plotting her death. He bought a spear gun, even though he had never shown any interest in spear fishing. He test fired it once in the backyard. The next time he used it, it would be to kill his wife.

Anna, John and Gracie

On the night of March 23 2004, John waited until Anna was asleep, then used the spear gun to shoot her in the head a point blank range. This didn't kill her, so he had to shoot another spear into her head. He then waited at least four days, taking Gracie to playgroup and going about life as normal, before late one night getting the spear gun out again. This time it was Gracie's turn.

He shot his 20 month old daughter in the head with a spear gun at point blank range. It didn't kill her and she started screaming. He then got the spears he had removed from his wife's head and fired them into his daughter. This still did not kill her. The screaming must have been horrendous by now. He then PUT HIS FOOT ON HIS 20 MONTH OLD DAUGHTER'S CHEST SO HE COULD WRENCH A SPEAR OUT OF HER SKULL and fire it into her again. Finally Gracie was out of her misery.

He cut up Anna's body and chucked it in the rubbish, along with Gracie's body and some of their possessions. For three months he lied to his family, Anna's family and friends and the public. He claimed that Anna was pregnant to another man and had left him.

Anna and Gracie

Eventually he confessed, after media and police pressure. The police found Anna and Gracie at the Mornington Rubbish Dump.

A further motive emerged after Sharpe confessed. He had been accused of molesting children several times in the past, although there had never been enough evidence to charge him. There is speculation that Anna found him molesting Gracie. I doubt whether we will ever know if this was the case.

I hope that every second of every day, all that John Sharpe hears are the screams of pain from his daughter. Screams from pain that he caused.

Links
 
Wikipedia
 
Mako