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2nd apparent family murder-suicide in week in US
AP
BEN NUCKOLS, Associated Press Writer
TOWSON, Maryland (AP) — A father shoots his wife and three children to death and then kills himself. A few days later and not far away, a family of four turns up dead in a hotel room in what police say was another case of a father killing his family and then himself.
The two chilling cases in Maryland in the last week are the latest in a string of U.S. family slayings and subsequent suicides that leave neighbors and friends grasping for answers when entire households around them are suddenly wiped out by violence.
Familicides have also occurred this year in Los Angeles and Santa Clara, California, and in Belle Valley, Ohio. The slayings are usually committed by men, usually because of shame over financial problems, and people close to the families never see it coming, experts say.
North of Baltimore, police said Wednesday that a New York tax attorney beat and asphyxiated his wife and daughters in a hotel room, then answered a call from his daughter's roommate before killing himself. Their bodies were found Monday.
They seemed like an ideal family: William Parente was a lawyer, his wife Betty a stay-at-home mom active in the community. Their daughters were well-liked by teachers and classmates.
They were in Maryland to visit older daughter Stephanie, 19, a student at Loyola College in Baltimore. With them was her sister, Catherine, 11.
James Margolin, an FBI spokesman in New York, confirmed that the FBI began investigating William Parente's investment business dealing after the deaths but declined to provide more details.
The New York state attorney general's office said it received a complaint from a man who says he invested hundreds of thousands of dollars with William Parente and had trouble getting his money back.
Spokesman Alex Detrick said the complaint was received Tuesday afternoon and officials hadn't determined whether to start an investigation.
The cause of death for Betty and the daughters was blunt force trauma and asphyxiation, Baltimore County police spokesman Cpl. Mike Hill said. They were found on the bed. Hill said William Parente died by cutting himself and was found in the bathroom.
Hill declined to elaborate on how the man cut himself or how his wife and daughters were asphyxiated.
It appeared that Betty died first, Catherine next and Stephanie died later Sunday afternoon, though the timeline was still under investigation, Hill said. There was no sign that they had been restrained and no notes were found in the room.
Investigators were unable to conclude if there was a struggle or whether objects found in the room were used in the killings or another object was used and later disposed of, Hill said.
Police Chief Jim Johnson said William Parente answered a phone call from Stephanie's roommate to the hotel room around midnight, after his wife and daughters are believed to have been killed.
Hill said investigators do not have a motive and have not determined whether the deaths were related to any financial problems.
Maryland was already dealing with a similar tragedy when word of the Parentes' deaths began to spread. Sometime late Thursday night or Friday morning, a father in the northwestern Maryland city of Frederick fatally shot his wife and their three young children, police said.
The father, Christopher A. Wood, 34, then shot himself. Police revealed Tuesday that the family was having extreme financial problems.
An analysis by the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., found an average of nine or 10 murder-suicides a week. But familicides — in which both parents and all their children are killed — generally happen only happen two or three times every six months, said Kristen Rand, legislative director for the center, a nonprofit gun-control advocacy group.
"They were so rare that we didn't really bother to count them as a separate category," Rand said. But in the last few months, she said, "there's a clear rash" of such killings.
They can be tied to the recession, said Richard Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
He describes familicides as "canaries in a mineshaft" — sensational cases that herald an uptick in more common forms of domestic violence.
"You can only speculate over whether the economy is going to affect the broad swath of abuse of children and abuse of women," he said. "But the warning sign is when these familicide cases begin to cluster. In the past few months, they have begun to pop off across the country."
In New York, Bruce Montague, 47, a New York lawyer, told Newsday that Parente recently sent him six checks, worth about $450,000.
Montague said that Parente told him that he could deposit two of the checks, but asked him to wait with the others. Montague said a bank official told him the four others would not clear.
Friends and neighbors of the Parentes said they never suspected anything was amiss and were dumbfounded to learn the family was dead.
Experts say that's typical of family killings. Several similar high-profile cases in recent months have been tied to families' economic woes, though there's no indication that was the case with the Parentes.
They lived in a neighborhood of million-dollar homes next to a golf course on Long Island, in suburbs east of New York City. William, 59, was a tax and estate planning attorney who commuted to Manhattan. Betty, 58, volunteered.
"I can't tell you how heartsick I am," next-door neighbor Mary Opulente Krener said. "This is the most wonderful family, the most kind and loving family. I'm astounded."
After the Parentes failed to check out of their room on time, a housekeeper found their bodies.
Cpl. Michael Hill, a police spokesman, said that the Parentes were not shot or stabbed. He declined to release the results of autopsies conducted Tuesday.
___
Associated Press writers Sarah Brumfield and Ben Greene in Baltimore and Frank Eltman in Garden City, New York, contributed to this report.
TOWSON, Maryland (AP) — A father shoots his wife and three children to death and then kills himself. A few days later and not far away, a family of four turns up dead in a hotel room in what police say was another case of a father killing his family and then himself.
The two chilling cases in Maryland in the last week are the latest in a string of U.S. family slayings and subsequent suicides that leave neighbors and friends grasping for answers when entire households around them are suddenly wiped out by violence.
Familicides have also occurred this year in Los Angeles and Santa Clara, California, and in Belle Valley, Ohio. The slayings are usually committed by men, usually because of shame over financial problems, and people close to the families never see it coming, experts say.
North of Baltimore, police said Wednesday that a New York tax attorney beat and asphyxiated his wife and daughters in a hotel room, then answered a call from his daughter's roommate before killing himself. Their bodies were found Monday.
They seemed like an ideal family: William Parente was a lawyer, his wife Betty a stay-at-home mom active in the community. Their daughters were well-liked by teachers and classmates.
They were in Maryland to visit older daughter Stephanie, 19, a student at Loyola College in Baltimore. With them was her sister, Catherine, 11.
James Margolin, an FBI spokesman in New York, confirmed that the FBI began investigating William Parente's investment business dealing after the deaths but declined to provide more details.
The New York state attorney general's office said it received a complaint from a man who says he invested hundreds of thousands of dollars with William Parente and had trouble getting his money back.
Spokesman Alex Detrick said the complaint was received Tuesday afternoon and officials hadn't determined whether to start an investigation.
The cause of death for Betty and the daughters was blunt force trauma and asphyxiation, Baltimore County police spokesman Cpl. Mike Hill said. They were found on the bed. Hill said William Parente died by cutting himself and was found in the bathroom.
Hill declined to elaborate on how the man cut himself or how his wife and daughters were asphyxiated.
It appeared that Betty died first, Catherine next and Stephanie died later Sunday afternoon, though the timeline was still under investigation, Hill said. There was no sign that they had been restrained and no notes were found in the room.
Investigators were unable to conclude if there was a struggle or whether objects found in the room were used in the killings or another object was used and later disposed of, Hill said.
Police Chief Jim Johnson said William Parente answered a phone call from Stephanie's roommate to the hotel room around midnight, after his wife and daughters are believed to have been killed.
Hill said investigators do not have a motive and have not determined whether the deaths were related to any financial problems.
Maryland was already dealing with a similar tragedy when word of the Parentes' deaths began to spread. Sometime late Thursday night or Friday morning, a father in the northwestern Maryland city of Frederick fatally shot his wife and their three young children, police said.
The father, Christopher A. Wood, 34, then shot himself. Police revealed Tuesday that the family was having extreme financial problems.
An analysis by the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., found an average of nine or 10 murder-suicides a week. But familicides — in which both parents and all their children are killed — generally happen only happen two or three times every six months, said Kristen Rand, legislative director for the center, a nonprofit gun-control advocacy group.
"They were so rare that we didn't really bother to count them as a separate category," Rand said. But in the last few months, she said, "there's a clear rash" of such killings.
They can be tied to the recession, said Richard Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
He describes familicides as "canaries in a mineshaft" — sensational cases that herald an uptick in more common forms of domestic violence.
"You can only speculate over whether the economy is going to affect the broad swath of abuse of children and abuse of women," he said. "But the warning sign is when these familicide cases begin to cluster. In the past few months, they have begun to pop off across the country."
In New York, Bruce Montague, 47, a New York lawyer, told Newsday that Parente recently sent him six checks, worth about $450,000.
Montague said that Parente told him that he could deposit two of the checks, but asked him to wait with the others. Montague said a bank official told him the four others would not clear.
Friends and neighbors of the Parentes said they never suspected anything was amiss and were dumbfounded to learn the family was dead.
Experts say that's typical of family killings. Several similar high-profile cases in recent months have been tied to families' economic woes, though there's no indication that was the case with the Parentes.
They lived in a neighborhood of million-dollar homes next to a golf course on Long Island, in suburbs east of New York City. William, 59, was a tax and estate planning attorney who commuted to Manhattan. Betty, 58, volunteered.
"I can't tell you how heartsick I am," next-door neighbor Mary Opulente Krener said. "This is the most wonderful family, the most kind and loving family. I'm astounded."
After the Parentes failed to check out of their room on time, a housekeeper found their bodies.
Cpl. Michael Hill, a police spokesman, said that the Parentes were not shot or stabbed. He declined to release the results of autopsies conducted Tuesday.
___
Associated Press writers Sarah Brumfield and Ben Greene in Baltimore and Frank Eltman in Garden City, New York, contributed to this report.
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