Читать книгу Parents Who Kill - Shocking True Stories of The World's Most Evil Parents - Carol Anne Davis - Страница 6

Ask a member of the public to describe a murderous mother and they will usually describe a teenage girl who hides her pregnancy from her parents, gives birth alone in her bedroom and leaves the infant to die of exposure in a nearby park. But, in reality, mothers also kill in their twenties, thirties and forties and their reasons for killing their newborn to teenage children are equally diverse. Within these pages you’ll find women who murdered their offspring for the insurance money, to garner attention or in order to enjoy a new romance. A few killed their children (and sometimes committed suicide immediately afterwards) whilst in the throes of post-natal depression, whilst others believed that their hapless progeny were possessed.

Some of the fathers who killed were also religious and believed that they were sending their brood to a better place, though in other cases the motive was financial. Chillingly, the most common reason was to get revenge on the children’s mother because she had left them or was planning to leave. In other instances, the motive was merciful, with their terminally-ill children facing an agonising and protracted death.

There’s also a section on couples who killed their children together, in the belief that they were ridding them of demonic possession or whilst physically disciplining them. Others were guilty of gross medical neglect.

In previous books, I’ve split British and American killers into distinct sections because their modus operandi were different – for example, British sadists usually kill close to home whilst American sadists often transport their victims for hundreds of miles, assaulting them repeatedly en route. But a revenge father who kills in Britain and a revenge father who kills in the states are amazingly similar, threatening their exes and even phoning them whilst in the act of murdering the children. Similarly, there was little distinction between a neglectful mother in the UK or the US and cases from France and Australia showed the same character traits. As a result, I’ve grouped these killers in themed chapters according to their reasons for the murder or murders rather than by country of origin.

The fourth part of the book examines ways of preventing some of these murders and is followed by an appendix of useful addresses.