Lets hope the New Year is kinder and gentler than the old one. The year ended with a highly publicized murder/suicide in NH. Mark Lavoie, at a little past 6 am, shot his wife to death and then successfully killed himself immediately after. He did this just 4 minutes after posting his intent on Facebook. (No criticism of friends on FB – the few who saw the post that early replied immediately and tried to contact him, with one friend even driving to the house and then to the hospital. There was just no time to prevent this.)
From a story on the murder/suicide from NECN:
Mark and Katherine Lavoie both died after shots were fired just after 6 a.m. at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, friends and family confirmed to NECN. Authorities have not revealed the pair’s identities.
The New Hampshire attorney general’s office said the investigation is still in its early stages, but the two deaths appear to be the result of a murder-suicide. Autopsies will be conducted to determine the cause and manner of the deaths.
On Facebook, Mark Lavoie stated his anguished motives for wanting to take his wife’s life, writing in part, “now because of my selfishness in dialing 911, she is experiencing the only thing she feared more than her illness, life-support on a respirator.”
Barbara Hanson, a friend of the Lavoies, told NECN that it was not a crime, but an “act of love,” and that the two were soulmates. According to Hanson, it wasn’t a secret that Katherine Lavoie was battling depression, and she said she believes Katherine tried to commit suicide on Sunday night, which was when her husband called 911. Hanson said Katherine Lavoie ended up on life support at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital.
“He knew Kathy would not want to live as a vegetable, and I think he knew he would be so broken without her that he needed to be with her and that’s why he did what he did,” Hanson said, adding, “This was not something that was done out of hate or loathing or anger or despair. This is something that was done out of pure, absolute love.”
In a similar article on the Huffington Post, I posted this response to what was being claimed in the article and the already mounting comments about how devoted and loving Mark Lavoie was:
I’d like to point out what should be obvious. The *only* “evidence” we have that the woman who was killed would have wanted this is from the word of the man who killed her.
There is consistent research of homicide/suicides in elderly people (the pattern here is similar) – 9 out of 10 involve the husband killing the wife. In a majority of cases, there is NO evidence the wife wanted to die or be killed. If it’s about compassion and love at work here, why are men doing almost all of the killing? Or is this about men reacting to stress with violence?
Diane Coleman also posted this reality check on the NECN story:
According to the American Academy of Neurology, a medical prognosis that the wife would remain in a vegetative state would require a waiting period of 90 days from the date she sustained the brain injury, not one or two days, to see what happens. (See https://www.aan.com/guidelines/home/getguidelinecontent/83.) People also may require a respirator temporarily following a brain injury, such as for a few weeks. I don’t have statistics from a medical authority to cite regarding the respirator issue, but have known many brain injured and spinal cord injured people who started out on a respirator and weaned off within a few weeks or months.
The responses of friends and family will sound familiar to readers of this blog. Men who kill wives who are old, ill or disabled are more lauded for their acts than condemned. But there’s research out there and an abundance of stories that dig deeper – that paint a more accurate and troubling picture. In this type of murder/suicide (and attempted suicide) the perpetrator is almost always a man killing his female spouse. Most of the victims haven’t asked to die or expressed a wish to die.
We’ve posted a lot of information on this. If nothing else please check out the 2013 post “An elderly woman’s “mercy killing” looking more like murder – an overview of elderly homicide/suicides” for some analysis of other murder/suicides and information on the research regarding these tragedies.
Thank you for educating us on these issues. As humans, we tend to believe what we want to believe. We want the last acts of a married couple to involve compassion rather than a violent coping strategy to a stressful situation. This is particularly true for the family and friends of the couple. I like your strategy of raising doubt with facts and logic rather than just making an accusation. Your questions is a good one: if these are acts of compassion, why the gender imbalance?”. The most likely answer IMHO is that men are more likely to react to stress with a violent response than women.
I was thinking of the following SPK quote: “SUI”(CIDE) = HOMICIDE. Even an attempted “sui”cide is nothing but PROTEST out of illness. Everybody here wants to LIVE, otherwise he/she wouldn’t have come to earth. But some don’t want to continue to live THAT WAY. What they seek is not death but a radical change … As the Socialist Patinets’ Collective / Patints’ Front writes: We have set illne-species and thermomimentics-warmth against the White Death. …
As to the medical prognosis and diagnosis in general, please, check out my posts from November 20 & 21, 2015 in your Blog (John Kelly Gives His Take on the NDY Protest of the World Federation Conference).
For more information see also SPK – Turn Illness into a Weapon, on the web site http://www.spkpfh.de/Turnill.htm , and: Diapathics of a Resurrection on the web site http://www.spkpfh.de/Diapthics%20of%20a%20Resurrection.htm
Doing and succeeding by virtue of illness
hans drager