Ohio Man Kills Daughters, 11 & 15, Then Self

[STEADFAST]

Can you believe it, another one???!!!!

Investigators said Dobson and his daughters were found shot to death in the same bedroom. A note was found inside the home but police did not elaborate on what it said. Authorities said Daniel Dobson and the girls' mother divorced in April of this year and had shared custody of their daughters. An arrest warrant for Daniel Dobson's arrest was issued Thursday because he missed a court appearance for a hit-skip charge, http://www.10tv.com/live/content/loc...s&cat=&sid=102

Three weeks before their father killed them, Nicole and Sarah Dobson met with a child-welfare worker who asked whether he had hurt them.
"The girls denied that they were abused or maltreated," said Eric Fenner, executive director of Franklin County Children Services.
With no physical evidence or statements supporting the allegations that had been made in a referral, the caseworker saw no grounds to remove the children from Daniel J. Dobson's Westerville home, Fenner said yesterday.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content...8.html?sid=101

[southcitymom]

Heartbreaking.

[Turtles]

So terribly sad!

[fran]

If these people want to kill themselves, just DO IT!

Why can't they leave the kids alone!?

Those poor girls. Bless their heart and may they RIP.

fran

[KaylynnCouture]

I'll probably NEVER understand why some people who commit suicide want to take their kids lives with them.

So sad.

[Missizzy]

This is so sad. DHS and the school were aware and were trying to help. They were so close to being able to catch those girls before they fell.

We wake up to this day after day. These are "normal" and "mainstream" families with the same stressors that families have always had. Why are parents killing their children in droves and committing suicide, though? And over divorce, foreclosure, lost jobs, infidelity? Why does one person go to a pastor or a counselor or to a parent's house and cry the blues and get support and another go and buy a gun? If you look at the "before" pictures, you can't pick the dangerous ones out with any certainty. There's almost an inverse affect. We see families living in abject poverty, with illness and hunger and dysfunction, and yet they keep plodding along--even with what many of us would consider insurmountable crises. Then we have families that look like they stepped out of a Disney movie, where the Dad does everyone in on a sunshiney school day.

Could the ever expanding use of psychotropic meds that people are taking be removing some societal taboos and pushing distressed folks closer to the edge? Are they teetering due to fluctuating and frightening mood swings? Or are these people NOT receiving meds when it is clear they need them due to stigma or finances? Could our societal pressures to have and keep "things" and look good to the outside world have been so internalized that we crumble if we fail at something. It's terrible when you lose a house or a job or a marriage...but the sun does come up tomorrow. Have we gotten to the point that we not only want instant gratification but also cannot bear the shame of failure?

Also, think back. Thirty years ago we didn't have to teach our kids about gang violence, or the dangers of meth, or AIDS. It sounds to me like we have a "new" public health risk on our hands. Possibly, families, churches, and schools need to be talking more openly about the very real threat of suicide and familicide. I've attended Suicide Support groups in the past (as I have a son who's tried at least 13 times). I've always been shocked by how few people show up. Suicide hotlines are wonderful and most likely save lives but we need to do more. We've got to figure out a plan of action for those who are getting ready to explode. We have to save the children.

I'm going to call a family meeting about this. I want to put it out on the table that our adult kids have options. Nothing is so bad that we can't figure out a way through it together. Is this the last taboo..the thing we can't talk about at the dinner table? Well, I'm going to open the discussion up for my family. We've just got to much to lose if one of us crumbles.

[mysteriew]

Since the divorce was recent, it could be that he wanted to hurt the ex-wife or didn't want to leave the kids to her when he killed himself.

People who kill their whole family are called family annihilators. There is actually a lot written about them. I found some previous cases where they talk about the pathology behind family murders.



It takes a certain personality type to kill off an entire family and the kind of stress caused by a financial crisis is a textbook trigger. Known as "family annihilators" the type of personality that kills their entire family as a reaction to loss of control in some aspect of their own life is well documented in psychology. http://www.nowpublic.com/world/finan...urder-suicides


snip...."The pattern is so strong," said Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University in Boston and author of the book "Extreme Killing."

"It's almost always a husband-father who methodically executes the members of his family. He plans the attack far in advance. He's suffered a prolonged period of frustration and depression. He experiences what he sees as the catastrophic loss of his children. He blames everybody but himself for his problems."

snip....Family annihilators tend to be socially isolated husbands and fathers, Levin said.
http://www.gazetteextra.com/delavanm...tern061407.asp

Known as "family annihilators", these people, most always men, have a profound need for control that drives them to destroy their family when they can no longer provide for them financially or when the family has been divided by divorce. (With men who commit murder-suicides there tends to be a catalyst such as a financial or personal defeat that they view as catastrophic, while women who kill loved ones are more likely to have a history of mental-health conditions like postpartum psychosis, as in the case of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five young children in 2001.)
http://www.newsweek.com/id/185440