thelastpsychiatrist.com - 8 Characteristics of Family Annihilators. Adnotated.

Mcfall murders - guess why

[He] beat his wife and daughterⁱ to death with a rubber mallet before hanging himself...

Hugh McFall, 48, of Oswestry, Shropshire, was found hanged on 5 February, hours after wife Susan, 55, and Francesca, 18, were found dead.

An inquest heard how he left a note by his body saying "I hope I rot in hell"ⁱⁱ.

Why did he do it? More specifically: why does the news report say he did it?ⁱⁱⁱ

I.

No one is surprised when the news reports murders; they're interesting in a pornographic way^iv. ("Now I have these feelings, whatever shall I do with them?")

But the murder is secondary to the report; the murder is an excuse to release an already worked out narrative. Murder suspects and victims become unpaid actors for a reality show CBS calls "The News."^v

An example from this week: Hundreds Attend Vigil for Slain Kansas Cheerleader.^vi

When you click on the link, what do you want to see?

Here is a picture of a tiger and nitrogen while you consider your prejudices:

Be honest: you want to see a picture of a cheerleader.^vii You sure as hell don't want to see a picture of a vigil -- but "vigil" = "pics of her while alive." Also: "Kansas"= white, which means she's hot. Otherwise they wouldn't have used the word "Kansas," they would have used the word "Trenton."

And what kind of a guy would kill her? How about "Rocco?"

Three burly cops="violent predator."^viii Do I need to tell you what his criminal history is? If I told you that Rocco has a history of burglary but no prior rapes or sex offenses, would that make you suspect him less?^ix No, because we all understand how a cheerleader might end up dead. Well, how did you come to understand that?^x

GREAT BEND, Kan. -- A 14-year-old central Kansas girl whose charred remains were found at an asphalt plant last week was a vivacious teen who loved bright colors and preferred wearing flip flops over any other type of shoes^xi, according to those who knew her.

Hmm. Doesn't really match the cheerleader type. In fact, this girl wasn't really a cheerleader -- she was going to be a cheerleader^xii when she started 9th grade in the fall. She was also going to be in geometry class, but they left that out.^xiii

That he killed a cheerleader makes sense^xiv; but killing some random 8th grader -- was he a first time pedophile?^xv -- makes less sense.

Calling her a cheerleader certainly draws in the viewers, but at a huge societal cost^xvi. Most of us learn about murder through the news, and empirical evidence (news stories) tell us they're right, so we adopt their narratives. Narratives aren't necessarily bad -- unless they're wrong. I'm not saying he did/didn't do it; I am saying that when you put "cheerleader" in the headline, I am surer that he did it in spite of my attempts at being objective. I'm surer because you're surer.^xvii

And narratives are hard to unlearn. Now that we know that she's an 8th grader and that he has no history of prior sex offenses, do we double back and give him the benefit of the doubt?

II.

Filicides, the killing of your kids, is no different.

There are broadly five types: altruistic, psychotic, unwanted child, accident by neglect, spousal revenge. Although filicide is perpetrated in equal numbers by mothers and fathers, spouse + kid murderers are overwhelmingly men.^xviii

That said, the media like to report on only three of these types of filicides: mothers who are psychotic (weak) ; women who are looking to get/please a new man (evil); and fathers committing "altruistic filicide" in which the father thinks he is sparing his family worse suffering by killing them (snapped).^xix

The case of Hugh McFall (from the BBC):

A florist beat his wife and daughter to death with a rubber mallet before hanging himself amid fears he would lose a big customer, an inquest heard.

Hugh McFall, 48... was found hanged on 5 February, hours after wife Susan, 55, and Francesca, 18, were found dead.

An inquest heard how he left a note by his body saying "I hope I rot in hell".

We're about to get a standard altruistic murder story highlighting the role of the employment, which completely misses the important subtleties. Here are the more important ones, with some interventions.

1. He's not losing a job, he's losing his ability to keep up the lifestyle:^xx

The self-employed flower salesman was facing accusations of invoice discrepancies from his main customer -- which had suspended his contract -- and feared a police investigation into his accounts... "His financial world had collapsed, his source of business income or at least 90 to 95% of it, had disappeared in a moment. Their lifestyle, as he knew it, would be over."

1b. The lifestyle often involves some kind of "soft" illegality (accounting irregularities, the use of drugs, etc). The news may cite jail as the main stressor; but the general fear is the irrreproducibility of the lifestyle (e.g. even if he doesn't go to jail, he'll never be able to make that kind of money again, legally.)

2. A sudden, temporary, but unshakable realization that there is no way out of this. "This is the end of me," "it's over," "I'm dead," etc.

Business associates told the hearing that Mr McFall had considered himself "finished"^xxi after a meeting about alleged invoice discrepancies the day before his death.

If you hear a man say, "I'm finished", believe it. Especially if it doesn't seem as bad as he thinks it is. It's his inability to see alternatives (which would require another person's perspective) that makes him dangerous.^xxii

3. While anyone can see how severe the problem is, no one else sees the problem as insurmountable -- except him. "Why didn't he just...?"

West Mercia Police said the case would probably not have ended up in court but an investigation would have been started if the owners of Stans Superstore had taken their concerns to police.

This is his inability to see things from another perspective except his own. What's obvious to you is not obvious to him, and opportunities to intervene can be missed if you think he "would have thought of that himself." Be concrete, be basic. "Look, are you a legal scholar now? Let's get a lawyer." A lawyer? Really? "Yeah -- I know a guy -- and let him tell you what he sees; if they can get OJ off, they can get you off. If nothing else, it's going to buy you some time..."
The longer he can experience his shame, the longer he will be able to live with his shame (or create a rationalization that will let himself live with it. The goal isn't to solve his problems, but delay him until he can think straight.^xxiii

4. Media says family murders= financial problems, but the money is merely the cover for the real shame:

The coroner said Mr McFall's fears about his sexual health may have been "going through his mind" when he killed his family, as well as his business worries and concerns over his "social standing".

And from another article:

A computer expert and senior forensic investigator told the inquest he had examined two computers as part of the investigation, one from the McFall's home and the other from his business premises. [An investigator] said someone had been accessing pornography, escort and massage parlour sites and seeking advice for diagnosing HIV.

Illegal activity, affairs, drugs... the money is important because it hides those things, allows him to present himself as something he wants to be.

Sometimes the financial narrative is so compelling it seduces even experienced criminologists. Criminology professor David Wilson:

"They've previously had wealth, had possessions, they went on foreign holidays. The annihilator feels 'given that I can't give my family any of this any longer' as an act of almost mercy, as they would see it, 'I'll take their lives so as to prevent them having experiences of any hardship'."

Wrong, always. It is impossible to think your children are better off dead unless you are unable to see their perspective.^xxiv If you asked them, what would they say? Why wouldn't you believe them? Why do you think you know better than they do?

They aren't better off dead; you're better off if they're dead. That's the secret that must be undone.

5. SHAME.

"I can't give them what they deserve" is a deflection from "I can't give them what they deserve." The panic is about them becoming aware of your failure.

[the criminologist] believes where they lived was a factor: "Oswestry is a face-to-face society. Those kinds of societies often provide a great deal of support, but if the wheel comes off in this type of society, then everybody knows your business... It's not like they are in a big city where they can simply disappear and become anonymous.

The same applies to honor killings.^xxv

The money is most often the final straw; without the money, you can't keep up the appearances...

Murders happen before the exposure, before "everyone finds out." Once they've found out, there is no reason for the murder. So either tell his family, or make him think you have. But then:

6. Sometimes he kills himself, and sometimes he doesn't.

He kills his family because he can't face them knowing. He kills himself because he can't face that they know.

The other reason for the suicide is the sheer number of people who are going to know -- can't kill 'em all.^xxvi

The likelihood of suicide increases as guilt increases, and decreases the more you can be convinced other people won't know/won't care.^xxvii

7. A very fine line: it was both spontaneous, and premeditated.

Two years ago another family murder took place near Hugh McFall's town, and McFall was horrified:

I remember Hugh saying 'How could you do that? How can it get so bad that you could do that to your family?... It just doesn't make sense, surely there's other ways out^xxviii however bad things get?'"

And certainly he wasn't thinking about killing his family before the financial problems hit. But as soon as he decides he's "finished," he starts planning the murders -- weapons/tools obtained, the biggest threat is killed first (i.e. wife before kids), etc.

7. Get out of the house, or at least the bedroom.
75% occur in the home, usually in the bedroom. It is extremely unusual (6%) for the man to kill only the children and not the wife. Since the purpose of this is to avoid shame, leaving the wife alive would be contrary to the point.

If you're the wife, don't go home, especially if he says he'll kill the kids if you don't.^xxix

1. Holy god these people are fucking ugly.

   How can these inbred fucks even stand themselves ? I mean... it's one thing for a misfortunate new life to come to its senses and find itself in the middle of fucking nowhere, complete orc shithole a la Belarus or Indiana or Argentina or whatever. But they get the fuck out just as soon as can attach some kind of wheels to some kind of plank, I guess, and that's that. At least there's trees to look at in the meanwhile or something.

   Yet... to open your eyes to England ?! Just wake up one day for the first time and be surrounded by these ugly fucks ? Merely walking down the street's an exercise in unmitigated che va piangendo i suoi etterni danni ; that sack someone untalented but fucking insistent charcoaled a face upon "loves" you ?! The ugly can not fucking love ; as a matter of course I deem every single case of an Englisher not going postal and butchering everyone in sight a case of dumb-and-deafness, pretty much. They're too out of it to even notice what the fuck's going on around them at all, there's no other explanation fucking possibe.

   How can these people be so ugly... [↩]

2. What do you call one ugly fuck rotting in hell ? [↩]
3. There's a few very good reasons :
   1. Criminals do not kill people in their homes. Successful murder requires good control of the murder scene, and the one place any one ugly fuck likely controls better than a stranger is his own home. Who the fuck ever knows where he has a hidden can opener, where a floor plank gives way, where a neighbour drilled a hole in the wall to watch the family daughters change their stockings, etcetera. Whenever a murder's suspected in the home, a surviving resident's the first, second, third and last suspect for this most excellent reason -- really no more is needed. Indeed death can and does occur in the home -- it's by far the most popular place to die for the contemporaneous ugly fuck, as it happens -- but if it's not natural it's likely accidental, and if it's neither then the spouse/parent/children did it. Don't give me any of that "spies" bullshit, either -- Ogorodnik was arrested/killed at the entrance of his apartment. Not inside.
   2. Criminals do not kill people with rubber mallets, or any other improvised instruments. Before guns, assassins used daggers and poison, but the principle remains : you need two things when setting out to kill someone, which are reliability and speed. A rubber ducky provides neither, and a rubber mallet is not much better.
   3. Criminals also do not hang people, with the obvious exception of governments, I guess. This'd be self-evident if you ever killed someone, but anyway, for the lesser readership : what the fuck are you going to do ? Sit there and wait ? Waiting is hard, especially with a murder flag dangling in the wind ; people who want the victim to die strangled generally use their own hands ; everyone else picks a better tool than fucking rope. Hanging is however enduring on the preference list of suicides, and for very good (and well understood) psychological reasons.

   Is three good enough ? [↩]

4. They're only interesting "in a pornographic way" recently ; before you gave up on your wife (by stopping beating her), and on society, and on everything else murders were interesting in a world-control sort of way. Are you aware how John Heath died, for instance ? Actually : are you aware how many deaths of reputed Wild West gunslingers were the result of "group of 100+ German miners did not see the humour in newspaper stories about the fellows' exploits" ? Well then.

   Newspapers still report murders today because not so long ago -- seriously, this beauty that went on her knees for men because men made her go on her knees for them was born barely long ago to be someone's great-grandmother ; say it again with me, you useless "maga" twerps : not. so. long. ago. -- people actually read them. I don't mean "read" them, like you "read" right after "having sex". I mean read-read, the sort of reading that drives action.

   What would you have them do, admit nobody reads anymore, because no, "reading" is no fucking substitute for reading ? And then what, deadline ? Hang themselves with a rubber mallet ? So then!

   Come to think of it -- why are you still derping about ? Nobody cares about your feelings nor whatever other assorted crap goes on in that rotting pumpkin of yours, why are you still here to preciously inquire why the newspapers are still reporting your failure to exit in a timely manner on your own fucking power ? Hm ?

   So then don't fucking ask about them. They're still here for the same reason you're still here : cancer. Things that used to be cells, people, interesting, worthwhile ; that meanwhile got damaged to the point where they aren't, nor could ever again be, but which also underwent damage so severe, not even apoptosis works anymore. The living dead, what. [↩]

5. This is a gem of a point. Go Ballas! [↩]
6. The important part is, of course, missing : [Impotent] Hundreds [impotently] Attend [pointless] Vigil for Slain Kansas [virgin] Cheerleader, aka everyone failed.

   Life's an examination, you ever met this concept before ? [↩]

7. The implication he's not voiced, "you want to see her being fucked to death" is not nearly so indefensible, and especially not nearly as indicative of individual pathology as he (just as unvoicedly) implies.

   Look up "alegoria moarte-nunta", [Eastern] Europe's (pro tip : what is "America", demographically ?) central, principal and most enduring folkloric conceit, wonder with me in bedazzled wonder as to why exactly these people'd bury young (="nelumit") men in wedding costume, fucking consider things for a moment past the cracking, maroon veneer of your neologistic puritanism! There's a very good reason the principal inquiry at the death of a young woman is whether her cooch had met the world yet or not really, and it has absolutely nothing to do either with the individual or with pathology, it's pure and strong (and yes, therefore beautiful) evolutionary biology.

   But then again you [attempt to] live in a parasitic "culture" of ugly fucks, whose principal mechanism of parasitation consists of identifying poorly understood and therefore unfamiliar yet perfectly natural mental processes, declaring them "evil" and then asking for money.

   Stop attempting that. It's stupid ; and no, it never did anything for you, either. [↩]

8. Aren't you starting to think just about now that this guy'd have been a whole lot better if he just got laid more ? Specifically, like a man, as opposed to "in a relationship" or whatever other bullshit. Or if you know, he had like... some kind of life experience, or... something. Whatever, anything whatsoever at all!

   Well... in his defense, he sorta-kinda figured this out himself. [↩]

9. I do not suspect there's any kind of link between the two. Neither the fact that the man was reported to have gone into bedrooms uninvited before nor the fact that the man was never reported to have gone into vaginas uninvited before offers much basis for inference in the instant case. [↩]
10. By being sane. If you make the law stupid, a general expectation of stupid downstream is not unreasonable. [↩]
11. As far as I'm concerned, this is already a decent reason to terminate a 14yo girl -- which (very importantly) means that if you're starting a posse to find her Rocco, I most likely ain't going, which means further other things downstream.

    Put it this way : if the only way Rocco's getting caught is by convincing some people to posse, no Kansas 14 yo vivacious female's ever gonna dare prefer flip flops over actual womanly attire ; whereas if you pretend like an imaginary "the government" can teleport alt-posses from thin air, all you get for your trouble is... your having to jack it to imaginary vivacious teens that don't, actually, exist.

    Choices have consequences, in this life -- and the consequences unerringly end up of the same kind as the choices that spawned them. Now stop participating in pretend-posses that pretend to have been teleported from thin air by a pretender to sovereignity ; and in exchange you won't have to pretend you're fucking vivacious teens. Deal ? [↩]

12. It's fucking USistan, if you're not what you're going to be then what the fuck are you ?! That's how that place works, entirely. [↩]
13. They also left out how she was gonna be in theology. And her bra size. Sometimes some things get left out, as a matter of taste and deceny. [↩]
14. This "sense" is squarely of the virtual kind, which is to say nonsense. Consider the experience of that Costa Rican crow, and then your own : all the adult woman, sitting on her cunt the throne of her wonder has to do is laugh at you. It will send you packing, instantly, you'll run until you're out of breath ; as did the crow, as would have Rocco.

    So, no -- that "he killed a cheerleader" makes not one whit or half a mote's worth of sense. To merely fuck her she'd have had to be drunk, and not a little drunk, either. "Carried her around like a side of beef", said Bayly, and for good reason : it's fearsome, cunt, it strikes terror in the heart of cripples, and even normal, boring bois avert their gaze.

    It makes no sense whatsoever ; you wish to pretend it does, but that is another thing entirely. [↩]

15. 8th graders, ie 14 year old females, ie girls that have been bleeding for years are eminently not the domain of pedophiles.

    Fourteen year old girls are old enough to be people's mothers. Fourteen year old girls are old enough to marry in most jurisdictions, both currently and at all previous points in history. Fourteen year old girls are the same age the mothers of most US presidents had their first child.

    A pedophile is interested in children, not young women. Children, you understand, six months old. Sixteen months old. As a perfectly useful rule of thumb, if you can't readily express the age in months, you can't talk of pedophilia. The pedo is the baby fucker, the "I can't even understand how anyone can even get it up with that, it's like trying to fuck a wine bottle" fucker, not the "omfg I wish I tapped that" fucker.

    An ephebophile is interested in prepubescents (and generally boys, at that). So if the object of amorous maneuvers can walk, but still... hasn't grown any hair, or whatever exactly bothers you about the situation of people having perfectly satisfying sex with girls under 12, you can use that term. Almost nobody ever does, which explains why it's here you first encounter it. Why do you think everyone else doesn't use it ?

    In the vein of which question, let's recount a story together. Two buddhist monks were walking through the countryside, alongside a river, looking for the bridge. Eventually they come upon the site of where a bridge once stood, but the river had destroyed the artefact. At the foot, a woman kneeled. Her worn through rags barely covered anything, but she was shapely and luscious, and she begged the monks to swim her across. One of the monks recoiled in horror at the notion of such close carnal contact, but the other swam her across on his back. Once deposited safely on the other shore, she offered herself in humble gratitude, for, as she modestly put it, lack of anything better to repay them with. One of the monks recoiled in horror at the notion of such close carnal contact, but the other fucked her, and then the pair went on their way.

    A night came, and then a day, and then others. Eventually, the monks were old, but still, together in the same monastery ; and one day, the night finally came for good, for one of them. As he lay dying he gestured for his brother to approach, and then in his ear he whispered, "how could you make it, with that woman, at the river!"

    The old monk looked into the dying eyes, confused. Had mind flown before spirit ? But then, in a flash, he remembered, and, taken aback, whispered in response : "My brother, I had left that woman on the side of that river. Why are you still carrying her ?"

    Why are you still carrying that six year old or nine year old or twelve year old or whatever the fuck she was ? That girl, the first girl you wanted to... well... do something to, or with, the memory gets fuzzy, but that first one, that you wanted and then thought "shouldn't" or whatever, "can't", "it ain't fittin'", whatever it is you cripples tell yourselves.

    Understand the important parts : that had you done what you wanted, you still wouldn't have done what you thought that may be, then (and absolutely not what you think it must've been, anachronistically, now). You'd just have found your own, natural limit, perhaps a little further out than the horrors your internalized notion of the Father seemed to you to have prescribed, but really not all that far ; and you'd have found them together with her, rather than by yourself, therefore discovering that what you seek and what's to be sought don't quite exactly coincide ; and, if you're any shade of lucky, also discovered that's okay.

    Stop carrying your mental tars along ; it's not good for you, for one, and it's also not nice, to the people you've hijacked to employ as unpaid actors in the little diorama playing out in your mind. I'm not even talking of the girl here, but take your misfortunate father. What, you think he had any secret plans to castrate you ? You think it's his fault you've chosen to project his innocent existence into a ready explanation as to why you aren't sharing a bed with the nude object of your interest, nor doing anything overtly towards it ? Think of this poor fuck, your father -- he's the other monk, stuck with you at his bedside not because you love him, as you loudly yet so evidently falsely claim, but because you aim to ask him "how could you!!!" and don't "know" how. You know, the same "don't know how" at work in the "I don't know how to end up naked with the softest, most delicious girl in kindergarten". It's not fucking nice, you understand me ?

    Start being a nicer person! [↩]

16. What does the author want to believe ?

    Is it perhaps that "media" matters ?

    Well... it doesn't. If all everyone ever saw from now on until the Sun expanded into red were nothing but back to back reels of fourteen year old cheerleaders riding the symbian machine, not one single extra erection'd occur in the entire known universe. It doesn't fucking matter, what! [↩]

17. Does this even work ? [↩]
18. Kid older than pedo-range is also overwhelmingly men. Female filicide generally disposes of infants (something mothers actually do a lot of -- leaving aside medical abortion and zygote-related failures to nest etc, lotta fecundated eggs still not reach first trimester. Mothers killed more children than Hitler! [↩]
19. It's true that I don't really follow "the media", but on one hand it stands to reason not all described types are equally likely to occur and on the other hand it stands to reason stories will follow the edge of the comprehensible, not the stolid portion of phenomena deeply inside that margin nor the unutterable portion of phenomena way out. Because... well, what can you do ? [↩]
20. This difference might indeed be too subtle for me. What's the substance ? Are jobs something mystically other than lifelines for maintaining lifestyles ? Ballas isn't expecting the man to have found his life's fullfillment in holding a can of spray paint at innocent flowers. Is he ? [↩]
21. Isn't it fucking scrumptious that the dude's name actually is Mc Fall ? [↩]
22. This is quite on point, yeah. [↩]
23. This is an eminently solid point, consider merely the case of Adrian Nastase, ex prime-minister of Romania. Like so many others, this schmuck (who also happens to be the picture-perfect closeted faggot, but whatever) let himself be used by the USGistani occupation government in Romania ; but tried to do it part-time only. As those stories always go, he was "unmasked" as an enemy of socialism, and well... got convicted to jail time. This was a very big deal for this peculiarly pretentious fellow, festooned as he found himself in cocoon after cocoon of alternable, plausible "lives" and personalities. Can you imagine why gay men in the closet might be affraid of going to jail ?

    As the police came to arrest him, he tried to shoot himself. The competent officer present prevented him, and Adrian Nastase went to jail with a hole in his jaw. Then he came out of jail, and didn't want to kill himself anymore ; instead, made himself a blog, which he diligently maintains to this very day (even though he's not published his cock just yet). You see ? Ballas is exactly right : force him to live with his shame for long enough, the female in him will find a way to survive. It's what they do, and, evolutionarily, what they're even for, because it's how babies are begot in the first place.

    PS. Is the fact that this process works the fuck better on faggots than on, say, actual women any indication to you of anything in particular ? [↩]

24. Deeper than that : in order to rather kill your children than say
    

    well... de, dragii moșului, așa o fi. N-om fi știind nici românește… Dar de acuma mult au fost, puțin au rămas, și în locul nostru voi veți stăpâni lumea și veți orândui-o cum vă va plăcea vouă“. Și, luându-și ziua bună de la lume ca de la cel codru verde, s-au strecurat pe rând acolo unde nu le mai zice nimenea că au fost răi români"

    in their general direction you must actually believe they do not in fact exist. The others reduced phenomenologically to mere figments of one's imagination, as (for instance, and inter alia) the very heavy societal cost of not permitting the beating of children. This is what happens, you realise. Do you ? If society forbids the father beating his children, the price society pays is the father no longer regarding those children as things. This is a good thing, you think, with your rotting pumpkin, but if they're not things then therefore they're figments. If he beat them in time, he'd have found how much they can carry, and why, and therefore wouldn't have killed them. Certainly not with a rubber mallet, you fucktards that there are no other, seriously, you look at the world around like the cat at the calendar.

    Psychopathy, you understand, is the magical quality of being completely confused by the banal ; and shockingly underperforming even mongoloids. Check and check, yes ?

    Well, what now ? Do you find a way to "live with" the shame of it all, maybe ? There's only one way, really, as Scott Adams well points out. [↩]

25. Speaking of which, -strictly-because-of-the-principle-of-the-thing-and-pointedly-not-because-of-the-convenient-manner-in-which-they-worked-upon-a-restr/>
    That unpleasant moment when "principles" you were supporting ~strictly~ because "of the principle of the thing" and pointedly not because of the convenient manner in which they worked upon a restricted set of circumstances decide to move on to another set of circumstances and work consistently but against your (inconsistent) preference. The only thing to do is look away. [↩]
26. Can sure as fuck try, which is probably a major driver of "mass shootings". [↩]
27. Everyone taking a tumble / being fucked in public imagines everyone else saw up their snatch, when in fact most people in attendance are so very busy with their self-secreted inconsequential minutia, they don't even notice. [↩]
28. As it turns out, the other ways out aren't nearly as much fun.

    It's what it is, after all, isn't it ? A contemporary aspie fuck's responsibility is first, second and last to himself ; he must make sure he's having a good time at all junctures, measure of mankind as he finds himself and all that. No ?

    Psychopathy is... [↩]

29. But... that wouldn't be nearly as much fun, which is why they always do go home.

    See ? If you stop to think about it, everything makes perfect sense. All you have to do is shake the monkey off your back for a moment first. But...

    well, it's not nearly as much fun without the monkey on your back, is it now. [↩]