Episode Two: Your Childhood Bestfriend
For many, childhood holds some of the most pleasant memories. Many of those memories include friends. Dance classes, talent shows, coloring, field trips, all with your best friend. As you grow, this is the person you share your secrets with, pass notes to, get ready for school dances with, go to parties with… maybe you even go to college together or get your first apartment with your childhood bestfriend. Or maybe you drift away from them…
I grew apart from my childhood best friend. Nothing happened. I was abroad for our later elementary school years, we wrote letters to each other… it was the 90s. When I came back we rekindled our friendship - we partied at her house, smoked our first cigars in my car, she taught me about all sorts of sexy time tricks - but we were never as close as we were as babes. We went to college, we lost touch, she murdered her mom.
Anything would have been less shocking for our little town. She was a sweet quiet girl who moved back in with her mom to care for her. Some people noticed bruises and scratches, a report was filed with Adult Protective Services. But no one intervened.
She had experienced a crushing amount of childhood trauma. This is what her lawyer argued pushed her to commit such an unthinkable act. I remember some of the whispers of those things, even as young as I was, and as removed as I was, I remember them. Imagine being the person who went through them. It is interesting to consider that this was a woman who was loved by many people and loved many people - including her mom.
In the world of matricide, which is rare among murders, this case is not so unique. While according to the US Department of Justice, males are responsible for 79.2% of family murders, 80% of women who kill their parents, kill their mom. According to a study published in Current Psychiatry, women who kill their mothers are generally middle aged, living alone with their mother, and suffer from a psychotic illness - generally true for my friend (except the middle aged thank you very much!). Most daughters who kill their parents are involved in a very strained relationship with the parent, as opposed to sons who kill their parents, who were frequently found to have schizophrenia. Another interesting but unrelated note - women who killed their dads were typically not suffering from a mental illness. Fascinating research.
Which leads to the big question, for me anyway: why are we so obsessed with this stuff? Parricide has been a subject of obsession going back to ancient Rome. And who hasn’t heard of Lizzie Borden? If you aren’t hearing the words to her little song in your head at the mere mention of her name, I’ll give you a million MYK Podcast stickers to plaster the world with. From Psycho to Janie’s Got a Gun, humans are all in on this subject. And learning about the details surrounding these situations can be equally fascinating.
But what about preventing these situations? If we know, or even think we know, what sort of person usually commits an act like this, could we help them? Could we stop them? Is this an ethical grey area? What do you think? Share, share, share! We’d love to hear what’s bouncing around in that brain of yours.
