I keep remembering that TM never visited his daughter in the four years she lived in Ireland. In Maginns book, TM seems mainly interested in collecting rent, not in his daughters medical problems. To use a common phrase in the States, he was just not that into her.
Did he love MM enough to die in prison for her...or even take the chance?
Why does Uncle Mike keep calling him a hero?
Who do they love and what does that tell us,if anything??
You raise some very interesting questions. I don't have answers, but a few more questions maybe. It appears to me that there's some deep dysfunction in that family. MM has a history of mental health issues - that can happen anyone, anywhere, anytime. It's the way it was handled that leads me to think that the dysfunction goes further, deeper. It's as if TM/SM were relieved when MM found someone and/or somewhere else to be - KM initially. When that doesn't work out and she needs to go to hospital, it must have been a weight back on them again. Then she went to Ireland and wonder of wonders, bags a well-balanced, successful husband plus a ready-made happy and healthy family. Why wouldn't they be relieved! (Although the fact that he was not told of her health issues is tantamount to endangerment IMO. When my 18yo daughter went as an au pair to a family for a summer, I rang them up and gave them chapter and verse on a minor UTI she had had, in case she needed anti-biotics while away)
My own take on how things happened is as follows:
I believe that MM's balance had been slipping. JC has had enough and plans to leave - maybe not immediately, but eventually - and without MM. In her precarious mental state, she sees this as failure, abuse, betrayal. If she's reaching the crescendo of the 'up-swing' in her BPD, she may feel that she has the power and the entitlement to take what she wants. Logic is distorted in that state, he is simply an impediment. She may actually believe that what he plans is an abuse of her. She calls her parents - maybe to complain, to tell them what he's going to do. They recognise the fragile state she's in and take an unplanned trip to see if they can salvage the situation. Maybe they talk, maybe they tip-toe around the issue and everyone goes to bed. But MM is on a high, and wouldn't be sleeping in that state...
So she lashes out - bat or brick, I don't know. Maybe the Trazadone was to get him groggy sleepy. The fury boils over and she attacks. I believe TM only comes in at the end and has no part in the violence other than trying to stop her. He wouldn't have known where the bat was kept necessarily, and as LE, if he wanted to do away with someone, he would have had any number of more believable scenarios he could have planned; a mugging, a robbery gone wrong, the list goes on...
"TM was asked about training he received while a member of the FBI, where he served in criminal investigation and counterintelligence for over 31 years. Its basically spy versus spy, Martens said." - IT, Aug. 9th
So I believe that he simply came on the scene, and again tries to salvage the situation. He's got this. He's LE, they're local yokels, (wrong!!) He can spin the abuse claim. The planning of that part of it and calming MM and SM down explains the delay in calling 911. Plus there's this thing that happens when people "ought to be grateful" - as you'd think the M family should be for JC taking MM on. They get resentful. I've seen it myself. That resentment is probably what fueled his 'hatred' of his son-in-law.
So, after all that, my questions are:
Did he fear MM enough to die in prison for her...or even take the chance?
Why did they not simply tell the truth, that this was a result of an unbalanced mind?
Who (or what) do they fear, and what does that tell us, if anything?
