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I have a really hard time understanding suicidal people who kill their kids -- what are they thinking? In the article the author mentions that Ruckman posted a

I have a really hard time understanding suicidal people who kill their kids -- what are they thinking? In the article the author mentions that Ruckman posted a loving video of one of his sons playing guitar about a year before the murders. wtf indeed.

deweller 9y ago
I don't pretend to understand the mindset of a suicide-murderer, but I'll make a guess. Perhaps they are in pain due to mental illness and want to end their life. The guilt of their children living without them is preventing them from moving ahead with their plan. By ending their children's life, it allows them to be free of that guilt and commits them to a course of action where they will end their own life.
senectus1 9y ago
That why Depression and suicide is classified as a mental illness. These people are sick, their comprehension of themselves and the world around them is broken. The reason you dont understand why or how someone could do such heinous actions is that YOU'RE NOT broken.
horribleonetime 9y ago
Having been there I can say the reason I considered killing them and my wife was to spare them the pain. Things would have been thrown into disarray if I had gone through with it and what a terrible life it'd leave them. It was only out of great love that I'd do that. I'm better now.
- kawera 9y ago
  [deleted]
  - DanBC 9y ago
    Jesus fucking christ what kind of question is that?
- Santosh83 9y ago
  Nevertheless, if you love them, let them live and take their chances.
jstarfish 9y ago
Shame. Guilt. Desperation. If I offed myself, life insurance wouldn't pay out. Savings wouldn't replace my earnings for long. I'd be abandoning my family, forcing my wife and kids to fend for themselves, basically forcing her to marry for money, and quickly. My kids would always have to live with the knowledge that I killed myself instead of being there for them. The answer to this for some might be to just kill them all and spare them such an outlook.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  life insurance wouldn't pay out. New policies wouldn't pay. But established policies (usually over 2 years of age) may pay out in the event of a suicide. So that isn't a good justification.
  - jstarfish 9y ago
    True. It's not something I'd want to leave to chance though-- it's someone else's money. When my ex's mother died of natural causes, her life insurance refused to pay out. She wasn't around to contest the matter. The choice became to write it off or fight a costly legal battle and recover a fraction of it.
banned1 9y ago
Murderers come in all shapes and colors.
Erlangolem 9y ago
The FBI studies mass murderers, and have a few models to explain people who kill themselves and their families. Typically the killer is a middle aged man, who “snaps” and kills his intended targets and himself. The typologies are generally broken down into roughly the following : Possessive rage. -A form of, “if I can’t have them, no one can.” Can also be even colder, “They’re mine to kill.” A family to this kind of person can be seen as something which belongs to them, and has no place existing in their absence. Disappointment with life in general, and his family in particular. -This typology bears the most similarity to mass murderers. The pilot who crashes his own plane, passengers and all, or the office shooter are not unlike this. -The killer almost always attempts suicide. Revenge against the mother. -Most often seen shortly after separation or losing custody, less likely to end in suicide. Paranoid ideation (protecting them by killing them). -Most often seen in the context of psychotic depression. -Suicide is inevitable. I know nothing about the man in this case, and so I’m speaking in general typologies. I’d caution people against assuming that he must have simply been depressed and suicidal however. Most people in that situstion only want to hurt themselves, and rarely have the energy, desire, or will to murder their children.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
I hate to speculate on these things, in large because I'm woefully unqualified. But I suspect that it may be due to his religious beliefs. He could've believed that he was going to being his children with him to heaven. Of course it's not a rational thought, even in the context of Christianity and their beliefs of afterlife, but suicidal people are rarely rational actors.
- xupybd 9y ago
  Hmm.. possible but that runs counter to most Christian doctrine. It's unlikely that someone would believe they'd end up in heaven after taking their own life let alone another's.
jmts 9y ago
I have a really hard time understanding suicidal people Believe me, you don't want to understand. The only way you can, is if you've been there. Imagine for a moment that you are in a hostage situation. Someone wants to kill you. They have the gun to your head, and you have no control over it. Maybe it's today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe you'll get out okay? Nobody knows. Inside you're scared as hell. You don't like this one single bit. But you're bound, and you can only struggle so much. They have their foot on your back, standing over you. You're powerless. They're screaming at other people. Yelling at you. Acting irrationally. It only takes the smallest thing to set them off, and there's only so much you can do to stop them pulling the trigger. Sometimes they'll go away for long enough for you to get a rest. Maybe get some sleep. But don't kick your toe or drop something. You'll wake them up and you'll be right in the thick of it again. But the person holding you hostage, is yourself. It's a part of your mind. And it will sap every bit of your energy to try to fight it. The healthy part of you doesn't want any of it. The healthy you doesn't want to hurt anybody. But sometimes you just can't fight it any longer. It's daily, monthly, yearly, conscious waking nightmare.
- samplatt 9y ago
  As someone that's been there, that's an excellent metaphor, and as close to a description of the freezing, sweating, spiraling manic terror that polite society will allow.
- mercer 9y ago
  Reminds me of how David Foster Wallace described it: “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
psyc 9y ago
They feel responsible for the children in the sense that they won't be around to provide for or console them. They feel responsible for the children in the sense that they want to spare the world from having to deal with their inherited traits, for any sense of the word 'inherited' you like. They consider the children extensions of themselves, and so consider the job would be unfinished otherwise. If the family is like a tree, they don't want to excise themselves only, they want to lop off the branch.

deweller 9y ago

I don't pretend to understand the mindset of a suicide-murderer, but I'll make a guess. Perhaps they are in pain due to mental illness and want to end their life. The guilt of their children living without them is preventing them from moving ahead with their plan. By ending their children's life, it allows them to be free of that guilt and commits them to a course of action where they will end their own life.

senectus1 9y ago

That why Depression and suicide is classified as a mental illness. These people are sick, their comprehension of themselves and the world around them is broken. The reason you dont understand why or how someone could do such heinous actions is that YOU'RE NOT broken.

horribleonetime 9y ago

Having been there I can say the reason I considered killing them and my wife was to spare them the pain. Things would have been thrown into disarray if I had gone through with it and what a terrible life it'd leave them. It was only out of great love that I'd do that. I'm better now.

kawera 9y ago
[deleted]
- DanBC 9y ago
  Jesus fucking christ what kind of question is that?
Santosh83 9y ago
Nevertheless, if you love them, let them live and take their chances.

jstarfish 9y ago

Shame. Guilt. Desperation. If I offed myself, life insurance wouldn't pay out. Savings wouldn't replace my earnings for long. I'd be abandoning my family, forcing my wife and kids to fend for themselves, basically forcing her to marry for money, and quickly. My kids would always have to live with the knowledge that I killed myself instead of being there for them. The answer to this for some might be to just kill them all and spare them such an outlook.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
life insurance wouldn't pay out. New policies wouldn't pay. But established policies (usually over 2 years of age) may pay out in the event of a suicide. So that isn't a good justification.
- jstarfish 9y ago
  True. It's not something I'd want to leave to chance though-- it's someone else's money. When my ex's mother died of natural causes, her life insurance refused to pay out. She wasn't around to contest the matter. The choice became to write it off or fight a costly legal battle and recover a fraction of it.

banned1 9y ago

Murderers come in all shapes and colors.

Erlangolem 9y ago

The FBI studies mass murderers, and have a few models to explain people who kill themselves and their families. Typically the killer is a middle aged man, who “snaps” and kills his intended targets and himself. The typologies are generally broken down into roughly the following : Possessive rage. -A form of, “if I can’t have them, no one can.” Can also be even colder, “They’re mine to kill.” A family to this kind of person can be seen as something which belongs to them, and has no place existing in their absence. Disappointment with life in general, and his family in particular. -This typology bears the most similarity to mass murderers. The pilot who crashes his own plane, passengers and all, or the office shooter are not unlike this. -The killer almost always attempts suicide. Revenge against the mother. -Most often seen shortly after separation or losing custody, less likely to end in suicide. Paranoid ideation (protecting them by killing them). -Most often seen in the context of psychotic depression. -Suicide is inevitable. I know nothing about the man in this case, and so I’m speaking in general typologies. I’d caution people against assuming that he must have simply been depressed and suicidal however. Most people in that situstion only want to hurt themselves, and rarely have the energy, desire, or will to murder their children.

toomanybeersies 9y ago

I hate to speculate on these things, in large because I'm woefully unqualified. But I suspect that it may be due to his religious beliefs. He could've believed that he was going to being his children with him to heaven. Of course it's not a rational thought, even in the context of Christianity and their beliefs of afterlife, but suicidal people are rarely rational actors.

xupybd 9y ago
Hmm.. possible but that runs counter to most Christian doctrine. It's unlikely that someone would believe they'd end up in heaven after taking their own life let alone another's.

jmts 9y ago

I have a really hard time understanding suicidal people Believe me, you don't want to understand. The only way you can, is if you've been there. Imagine for a moment that you are in a hostage situation. Someone wants to kill you. They have the gun to your head, and you have no control over it. Maybe it's today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe you'll get out okay? Nobody knows. Inside you're scared as hell. You don't like this one single bit. But you're bound, and you can only struggle so much. They have their foot on your back, standing over you. You're powerless. They're screaming at other people. Yelling at you. Acting irrationally. It only takes the smallest thing to set them off, and there's only so much you can do to stop them pulling the trigger. Sometimes they'll go away for long enough for you to get a rest. Maybe get some sleep. But don't kick your toe or drop something. You'll wake them up and you'll be right in the thick of it again. But the person holding you hostage, is yourself. It's a part of your mind. And it will sap every bit of your energy to try to fight it. The healthy part of you doesn't want any of it. The healthy you doesn't want to hurt anybody. But sometimes you just can't fight it any longer. It's daily, monthly, yearly, conscious waking nightmare.

samplatt 9y ago
As someone that's been there, that's an excellent metaphor, and as close to a description of the freezing, sweating, spiraling manic terror that polite society will allow.
mercer 9y ago
Reminds me of how David Foster Wallace described it: “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

psyc 9y ago

They feel responsible for the children in the sense that they won't be around to provide for or console them. They feel responsible for the children in the sense that they want to spare the world from having to deal with their inherited traits, for any sense of the word 'inherited' you like. They consider the children extensions of themselves, and so consider the job would be unfinished otherwise. If the family is like a tree, they don't want to excise themselves only, they want to lop off the branch.