The story is indescribably gory, and the appearance of deliberate intent is unmistakable. The case is causing reverberations across the USA. A Go-Fund-Me campaign has been organised to support the individual who is the apparent culprit in the drama, but who is perceived by many as the victim. It has already raised in excess of one million dollars. The facts are without controversy.
On the 24th of January 2023, a 33 year-old nurse and mother of three requested her husband, who worked from the family’s home in Duxbury, Massachusetts to pick up a take-away meal for the family from a restaurant in town. He was also to stop at a pharmacy on the way to pick up a laxative for one of their children.
Shepherding her children – Cora, five years old, Dawson, three, and Callan, a baby only eight months old, to the basement of their home, she proceeded to strangle them, one by one. When she was done, she went up to the second-floor bedroom, slashed her wrists and neck, and jumped from the balcony to the ground. When her husband returned home, he found her lying on the ground, paralysed from the waist down.
His mind went instinctively to the children as he dialled 911. When the paramedics, and the police arrived, they found the children unconscious. They attempted resuscitation. The two older children were dead by the time they arrived in hospital. The baby died three days later. Nothing about the sad story is simple, except the facts as stated. Psychiatrists reading this are probably saying ‘Ah, Postpartum Psychosis’.
Some other Nigerians would be certain it was a ‘Spiritual Attack’. There is a criminal case ongoing in Plymouth that has caused all manner of sensation and controversy, and pitched prosecution and defence psychiatrists and psychologists against