20. There weren’t any real red flags, but his family did have some mental illness in their history.
“Cousin of mine shot his father 12 times and his mother once in the head. He then told his younger brother to clean up the blood and to write messages on the wall like, ‘Sorry, my first kill was clumsy’ and other chilling stuff. The two of them then went to an anime convention in Oakland and acted like nothing happened. This happened last week. There weren’t any real red flags, but his family did have some mental illness in their history, on top of the fact that the father was not OK with his son being gay, I guess he just snapped.”
21. I am quite literally sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
“My half brother, we’ll call him M, killed his 6-week-old son. He’s currently sitting in prison awaiting trial for 1st degree murder. The autopsy revealed that the baby had multiple bone fractures in various stages of healing. He was also severely malnourished and underweight. M admitted to police that he was overtired from staying up late playing video games, and when the baby started crying he lost his temper. He explicitly told the police what he had done to his son. I won’t describe it here because, frankly, it’s utterly horrifying. I am quite literally sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
I hadn’t seen or talked to M in years, so I can’t say that I noticed any red flags recently. But I do know that our father was extremely mentally and physically abusive. I watched him beat my brother with a metal studded belt. I saw him throw a kitten against the wall, killing it, in a fit of rage. My parents split up when I was about 3 and my mother had custody, so I didn’t have to deal with the abuse as much as my brothers did (they’re my father’s children with another woman).
So I suppose the cycle of abuse continued, and M is looking at spending the rest of his life in prison. I never met his son, but I cried for days after hearing about it. I wondered if things might have turned out differently if I had maintained contact, if I could have helped him cope with being a new parent, and maybe the baby might still be alive. It kills me to know that, during his whole life, all this kid knew was fear and pain.”
22. My father has always shown sociopathic tendencies; he kind of reminds me of a kid around 8 years old stuck inside a 44-year-old’s body.
“I watched my father behead a man with a knife. It was over drugs. Father had a good lawyer and got 3 years, I think it was some kind of self-defense claim, but it was total bullshit. I watched that man lay sprawled on the ground face down while the serrated edge of the knife carved through his skin like paper and I heard his screams and gasps of pain. I still have vivid nightmares about it. As for red flags, my father has always shown sociopathic tendencies; he kind of reminds me of a kid around 8 years old stuck inside a 44-year-old’s body. I cut contact with him a few years ago when the memories resurfaced, I was only 4 when I saw it happen, and his mother confirmed it to me. Thankfully, my mother split with him when I was a year and a half, but I don’t think I was supposed to be there, my grandma probably let me go with him while I was being babysat.”