Читать книгу Parents Who Kill - Shocking True Stories of The World's Most Evil Parents - Carol Anne Davis - Страница 34
ОглавлениеThough hormonal changes – and generalised stress – in the post-partum months are the most common cause of mental breakdown in mothers, a small percentage develop severe mental illness that isn’t necessarily associated with childbirth.
VIVIANE GAMOR
Originally an intelligent woman who was studying for a master’s degree, mother-of-two Viviane Gamor became delusional in 2003. The student, who lived in Hackney, East London, insisted that she had met various famous people and would talk at length about these fictitious relationships. She began to stare at strangers intently for no apparent reason. More chillingly, she shaved off the hair on one side of her baby daughter’s head.
Over the next two years, Viviane’s mental health deteriorated further and she changed her name by deed poll to Mother Nature Viviane and said that Jesus was her twin.
In early 2006, she was sectioned under the mental health act for threatening her half-sister with a knife. The father of her son and daughter, Gabriel Ogunkoya, took the bewildered children to live with his parents. They were also cared for by himself and his girlfriend. Yet, despite the crucial role he played in his children’s lives, the authorities didn’t tell Gabriel why his ex-partner had been sectioned or that she’d been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.
UNSUPERVISED ACCESS
Viviane seemed to respond well to medication and after five weeks the authorities let her out. A condition of her release was that Hackney social services would oversee any contact that she had with her children. But staff shortages meant that the supervision only extended to the first visit, after which a social worker mandated that she should be allowed unsupervised access to Antoine and Keniece. The children’s father was so alarmed by this that he sought legal counsel, but the solicitor said that, if he kept them from their mother, he would be virtually kidnapping them and breaking the law. Gabriel was so concerned that he gave his 10-year-old son a mobile phone and told him to call at any time.
The 29-year-old’s first two unsupervised access visits in January 2007 with her children passed without incident – but, unknown to Hackney social services, she’d stopped taking her medication. On 24 January, she was seen by a psychiatrist who said that she had a positive outlook and did not pose any further risk. Two days later, during the children’s third overnight visit, she flew into a psychotic rage and began to beat 10-year-old Antoine with a hammer. Neighbours heard his agonised screams and called the police. They arrived at Viviane Gamor’s flat but by then she’d killed her son and had wrapped cling film around the face of her three-year-old daughter, Keniece, suffocating her to death. She told horrified police officers: ‘I don’t care. They’re not mine.’ She was sent to a psychiatric facility.
From the start, she freely admitted both murders and later pleaded guilty to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. She appeared, flanked by psychiatric nurses, at The Old Bailey in June 2008 wearing a red leather jacket and a scarlet T-shirt, seemed indifferent to the proceedings and was detained indefinitely under the mental health act.
Afterwards, the grieving father said ‘I obeyed the law and let them go. I wish I had not done that. The system that I obeyed has frogmarched my children to their deaths. They assessed her and found nothing wrong. This is pure negligence which will not be tolerated.’
In August 2008, an inquiry concluded that mental health services should have taken more account of Viviane Gamor’s bizarre behaviour towards her children – but, surprisingly, it failed to identify a single decision which could have prevented their deaths. The children’s father, now 33, branded the inquiry a whitewash and said ‘My family and I feel totally let down. It is a system which has failed my children.’
DEANNA LANEY
A religious obsessive, Texas housewife Deanna Laney named her three sons after Biblical characters. As the years passed, her mania deepened until she believed that she was hearing messages from God. He told her to kill the boys and said that, if she resisted, they would meet a more unpleasant death. Reading her bible more obsessively than ever, she began to lose weight and would later say that she smelt sulphur and interpreted this as proof of the Devil. Over time, she saw signs that God wanted her to kill the boys with rocks, and she hid one away in her baby’s room.
On 11 May 2003, she put the three children to bed at 9pm before retiring for the night herself. But she awoke at 11pm and went to her 14-month-old, Aaron, who was asleep in his cot, fetched the rock and brought it down hard on his skull. He began to scream and her husband woke up and asked her what was wrong. Calling that everything was fine, she put a pillow over the baby’s face to muffle the noise. He was left partially blind and with permanent motor control disabilities as the result of this brutal attack.
A DOUBLE MURDER
Leaving little Aaron with severe injuries, she woke six-year-old Luke and told him to follow her into the garden. He did so. She ordered him to lie down with his head on top of one of the largest stones in the rockery. When he was supine, she picked up another rock and smashed it into his head: though he sustained massive injuries, the unfortunate child didn’t die right away. But, when he did expire, his mother was unconcerned as her god had promised that the little boy would be resurrected on his birthday in two months’ time. She dragged him into the shadows, where his brother wouldn’t see him, and put a large boulder on his chest.
The 39-year-old then fetched eight-year-old Joshua from his bed and led him to the garden where she brought another rock crashing down on his skull, fatally injuring him. Pulling him into the shadows to lie beside his brother, she put a large boulder on his chest.
Returning to the house, the devoted choir singer calmly phoned the operator and said that she’d killed her three boys. Detectives arrived to find the oldest two dead and the baby fighting for his life. When they asked her why she’d done it, she replied ‘I was told to do this by God.’ A week later she told a court appointed psychiatrist ‘I know that murder is illegal under man’s law, but I was answering to a higher authority.’
She repeated her religious arguments during her trial in May 2004, telling the jury ‘In our faith we believe the word of God. This word is infallible. I feel the Holy Spirit springs up within me when I speak of him.’ She said that she expected to become ‘God’s witness to the end of time.’ Her husband, who had promised to stand by her, broke down several times as jurors were told of his sons’ painful and frightening deaths.
The jury took seven hours to find her not guilty by reason of insanity and she was shipped off to a mental hospital indefinitely. Afterwards, her brother-in-law, a pastor, said that Deanna wasn’t responsible as she had been possessed by a demon at the time.
