What kind of person jumps off a cliff with two children? **MNHQ warning: upsetting content**

[Leafyhouse]

I've been really shaken by that story about the woman stabbed at home, and the father found at the bottom of the cliff with 2 dead children, 10 and 7.

Their home is about 400 yards away from me. I also have 2 DS's, aged 8 and 10. It's just made me sick to the core. Police and forensic officers all over this lovely house, in a really nice area - and for what? Why would someone do that? Have your own problems, but why take the children?

Just reeling at the moment, am going to hug my kids extra tight tonight. This one's just so very close to home.

A man. Needed saying.

One of the things that's occurred to me is how grateful I am for the firearms laws in this country. I mean, what would have happened if someone in that condition had grabbed an assault rifle and headed to the local school? God, it's sickening...

poor man ?

What the actual fuck ?

A murdering bastard is what sort - he killed his wife and then threw the children over

In these circumstances - a man who has been abusive and controlling, and who is still seeking to punish his wife or partner after she has left him. That's who would do that.

If it was a woman who'd done it - almost certainly serious mental health problems. A man - different story, different causes.

It is the ultimate in domestic violence.

It is seeing other humans as either an extension of oneself or as property. Not autonomous human beings.

It often occurs when there are custody battles as the kids have no value beyond a tool to punish ex

Women & children are most at risk of this when they try to leave.

I find it really upsetting that people actually think there is a mental illness that affects wonderful family men and makes them violently murder their children.

Serious? People think that's what happened here?

Poor fella, so Ill.

Wtf.

@Morphene why kill his wife then?

SpringHen - that's the thing that strikes me - seems like it's all about ownership, like wife and children not people in own right.

Just a man.

Not well or unwell.

Just a man.

Another domestic violence incident.

Another woman and more children gone, at the hands of a man.

But let’s feel sorry for him and say he was unwell

Would you all say the same thing about Alan Hawe, who stabbed his wife and three sons to death before hanging himself? That he was ill? A victim?

I don't know that particular case, but in principle, yes. Anyone who does something like that/like this man is by definition not properly functional, and I for one would rather find compassion in that situation than lob around words like 'sick' and 'evil'.

I abhor violence and I know there are lots of men who end up doing this after a long period of abusing women and children. I don't think this is OK. But I do think anyone behaving like this is unwell in some way rather than 'evil'.

A murderous bastard, even if he was mentally ill, my pity is reserved for his wife and those poor little lads, they must have been terrified.

Well we don’t know yet do we? it’s pure speculation.

My exh was a violent controlling psychopath. The police told me these men are often at their most dangerous when the woman has the audacity to leave them. They weren't wrong and l had to have an injunction with power of arrest for a mile radius around my home and work. They weren't wrong, l never thought it was possible to see him more angry than l already had but have no doubt my life would've been in danger had he got to me. They've lost control see, mh my arse.

I'm at people saying he must have been unwell or desperate.
Can we stop making excuses for murderers please. He murdered his wife and his children. He could have been controlling them for years.
May they (the wife and DC) RIP

I’d presume someone mentally unwell or very scared and not thinking straight

I'd presume you know Fuck-all.

Very scared. Yeah. all those family annohilators- very scared, nice men.

An arrogant abusive person who feels that he owns his family and therefore has the right to decide if they live or die, who believes he has the right to kill his wife if she doesn't obey. Or the abusive man in question has ruined own life and decides to end it then decides that without around then his children will have no quality of life and it's best to end it for them.

Maybe mentally unwell but more likely the above.

Hmmm why are so many people so sure he was unwell?

Family annihilators can just be cold hearted calculated murderers. Although I wish it were true that no sane person is that evil.

Can’t understand the sympathy for these murderers.

Nope. Neither can I.

Funny how these "desperately unwell" people always seem to be men.

Suicide is one thing, I won't judge, murder another.

It's more comforting somehow to think that this was someone desperately ill who didn't know what they were doing.

However there are some men who terrorise and murder their wives and children. I don't think they see their families as people, more things they own that are theirs to destroy.

family annihilators

At the moment we know nothing about his motivation and I don't think that some of the pretty unpleasant speculation on this thread is all that helpful. If he was ill and (say) his parents or sister came across this thread how do you think they might feel?

I don't think it's mental illness, just a controlling, homicidal man.

We don't know, in this case.

@Morphene why kill his wife then?

We don’t know. It could be that he was genuinely delusional. Perhaps schizophrenic. There are circumstances where people are having paranoid delusions and they genuinely believe the other person is a danger to them or that they are saving them from a worse fate because they are totally detached from reality. I believe a woman jumped off a cliff with her baby in circumstances like that a few years ago:

Or he might just be an evil bastard.

We don’t know.