Children Who Kill: Profiles of Pre-Teen and Teenage Killers (31 page)

Politicians and newspapers which have a political axe to grind always make much of the fact that child killers like Robert Thompson come from single parent families. But when Robert’s parents were together he merely had two violent parents rather than one.

And many of the children profiled lived with both their parents. Cheryl Pierson’s mother and father stayed together until her mother’s death from kidney disease – and her boyfriend, Rob Cuccio, who helped mastermind James Pierson’s murder was from a stable
two parent family. Shirley Wolf’s parents were still together years after she went to prison. And, though Billy Bell was not Mary Bell’s biological father, he lived with Mary and her mother for many years.

The Bells had a very odd marriage – but Kip Kinkel’s parents were devoted to each other. Kip admitted that he’d killed his mother because he couldn’t bear to see the pain and disappointment on her face when she saw that he’d killed his highly critical dad.

Children are, of course, affected by their parent’s divorce – but it’s the constant arguing accompanying the split that often does the most damage. Sean Pica’s mother fought constantly with Sean’s dad even after he’d left her and remarried. (Sean’s father wasn’t one of the bad guys. Though he’d found it impossible to stay in the marriage, he returned to it from a sense of duty when his oldest child was very ill.) Mary Anne Woodham screamed at her husband in front of the children then blamed little Luke when her spouse left the family for good.

Children need to know that they are loved by their parents. They also need a sense of stability. The profiled children with married parents didn’t have this because at least one of the parents was physically, sexually or emotionally abusive. The children with the single mother – such as Cindy Collier – also didn’t feel safe because she introduced numerous violent boyfriends to the home.

A percentage of the population believes that some children are simply born uncaring and that as a result they can easily turn into mini-killers. But the facts suggest otherwise.

William Allnutt missed his mother so much (and became so ill) when he was at boarding school that he was sent home to her. In prison, he was more concerned about her feelings than he was his own. Cheryl Pierson often went to her father’s room to shield her terminally ill mother from his violence and sexual demands. Peter Dinsdale left children’s homes again and again in the hope that this visit with his mother would turn out to be a loving one and little Sean Sellers cried every time his mother went away.

Even after they’ve murdered, many of these children remain attached to their abusive or inadequate parents. Shirley Wolf lay across her father at visiting times – and was desolate, years later, when he stopped answering her letters from prison. And one of the few times that Rod Ferrell got tearful was in court when his mother cried.

Sometimes the child is still desperate to believe that at least one parent is good. This tends to mean that the child still believes that she herself is bad and it makes it difficult for her (or him) to move on emotionally. Cindy Collier at first made little progress in prison therapy as she refused to see that her mother had failed her by leaving her with numerous violent
boyfriends and by not reacting when Cindy was raped again and again by a relative.

It’s clear, then, that these children start off feeling love – yet geneticists try to tell us that these juveniles who go on to kill are simply born bad. They blame nature rather than nurturing – or rather the lack of nurturing.

Whilst it’s true that one child may be born with more timidity or verve than his siblings, we can see again and again that it’s the environment that determines how these qualities are moulded. When young troublemakers are placed in a caring, positive-parenting style environment they improve. Dr Dorothy Lewis, who assesses teenage prisoners on Death Row, has said that even at this stage she sees a softening in some of them, as they’ve been around kind and intelligence adults for the first time in their hate-filled lives.

That said, it would be wrong to suggest that a few acts of kindness can undo the years of damage and neglect. Sean Sellers killed a shop clerk who’d spent the last hour happily chatting to him. And Cindy Collier and Shirley Wolf murdered a lady who’d let them in to her house for a drink and to use the phone. Luke Woodward shot a girl who had hugged him and other pupils frequently at school. He later apologised to the girl’s family in court, but obviously this did nothing to take away their pain.

Society erroneously gives the impression that these children are simply born bad. One book on the subject explains in depth about how often these children are violently parented – but the publishers put the words
‘bad seeds’ on the front cover so the casual observer in a bookstore comes away with the impression that these youngsters sprung malevolent from the womb. Another book gave the impression that these were children from good homes (including some of the children who were profiled here!) who mysteriously went awry due to some inner demon, whereas more research would have shown that these children were relentlessly mocked and struck. The following chapter identifies some of these myth-makers and looks at how insidiously they work.

Numerous individuals and groups contribute to the myth that children who kill have chosen to go bad or were born bad. Some will do so out of ignorance, others because it’s easier to blame the child than to change society. This author identified the myth-makers below whilst researching this book:

When a child kills his or her violent parent, the family tends to close ranks. Relatives praise the abusive parent and either deny that abuse took place or strongly minimise it, sometimes because they feel guilty at their own failure to intervene.

These families tend to have many dysfunctional members who assume that the way they were raised was normal therefore they put all of the pathology onto the juvenile who kills. Psychologist Dorothy Rowe has written that adults can ‘inflict the same pain, humiliation and fear that had been inflicted on them.’

Many of these adults were too immature and damaged to raise a child, but they procreated regardless men blamed the child for all their woes.

One parent (most often the mother) often also looks the other way when their spouse rapes their daughter. This topic was raised in an edition of the Kilroy talk
show where the topic was Sexual Abuse Within The Family. One woman explained that when she was six she’d told her mother that her father was interfering with her. Sadly, the mother’s response was never to speak to the child directly again, only talking to her through her sisters. The family chose not to believe that this little girl was being molested – but the authorities eventually let her wear a wire and they were able to hear the abuse for themselves.

Another situation where adults had failed to protect a child was revealed in an episode of Correspondent which looked at paedophile priests. One boy who had been inappropriately touched by a certain priest knew that the man was coming to his aunt and uncle’s house where he was staying. The boy begged them not to let him be taken anywhere by the priest and the relatives agreed. But as the priest was leaving the house he asked to take the child with him to show him the new church organ. The aunt said ‘Yes, of course, Father’ because she’d been raised to have respect for priests. The child was then taken a way and abused by the man who was unrepentant about the child’s anguish and made it clear to the boy that he’d do this to other boys.

Again and again there were reports made to the local Bishop about this particular priest but he was just moved from one parish to the next where he continued to rape male children. Some adults in the community simply refused to believe that a priest would do such things – but in reality there are so many clergy abusing children that there have been special sexual offender courses set up to treat them. And if they are
married clergy the course leaders can co-counsel their families.

This particular priest continued to deny any wrongdoing but one boy used a hidden camera to videotape what was happening. Thereafter the priest was finally charged. Whilst on bail this paedophile committed suicide. Sadly, several of the youths he’d spent time alone with also committed suicide.

It took many years for this man’s paedophiliac activities to officially come to light – yet dozens of his parishioners suspected he was harming the community’s children. Those adults who did react seem only to have informed someone in the church’s hierarchy. It appears that no one went to the police.

If one of this man’s victims had snapped and killed him, it’s a safe bet that child would have been classified as bad and the priest as good.

The child who kills often has siblings who turn against them. Cheryl Pierson and Wendy Gardner both had younger sisters who took the side of their dead relatives in court. The prosecution suggested this meant that Cheryl and Wendy were just ‘born bad’ as their siblings said they had no problem with the dead relative. But a closer look at the facts doesn’t bear this out.

Witnesses had seen Cheryl’s sister being slapped across the face and mocked by her father – and Cheryl’s brother was so tired of being hit and ridiculed
that he left home at the earliest opportunity. Neighbours had tried to keep the children away from the man.

Cheryl’s sister had said that any sexual contact between Cheryl and her dad was Cheryl’s fault as she was ‘always laying all over him.’ The younger child understandably didn’t know that this was learned behaviour, that incest victims are coached into being sexual by their abusers in order to avoid further punishment.

Wendy Gardner’s sister also said that her guardian had treated them well – but in court, when questioned, she admitted to being beaten with a paddle and a fly swat. Neighbours had heard screams and someone had contacted the social services. Both Wendy’s sister and Cheryl’s sister were now staying with relatives of the deceased, something that must also have helped shape their view of things.

It’s also evident that a controlling parent or guardian often doesn’t act so controllingly towards a younger child as the younger child has fewer places to go and thus fewer chances to anger the parent. Wendy and Cheryl were both teenagers desperately trying to find love with their new boyfriends, something that neither Wendy’s grandmother (who had called the police and asked them to stop the teenagers caressing each other) or Cheryl’s incredibly jealous father could tolerate.

The other strong difference between the older sister who snapped and the younger one was that the older girls had started menstruating. Menstruation puts a strain on over eighty percent of even the most balanced
women – for a physically and emotionally abused young girl, the additional stress must be nearly intolerable. Stress strongly exacerbates premenstrual syndrome and it’s known that it can also change the length of the cycle. This was likely in Cindy Collier’s case for at one stage she bled for almost three weeks and had agonising cramps.

Some crime writers – perhaps pandering to public option – further misrepresent the cruelty that these children endured before they fought back and killed. They get round the parental violence by saying that the child was difficult so the parents ‘had to beat’ him or her frequently. They also treat the child’s natural attempt to evade further assaults by running away as another form of pathology.

Encyclopaedia-style works about children who kill often don’t mention the circumstances leading up to the murders at all, so that the casual reader is left with the impression that these children were simply born bad and chose to be exceptionally violent. The reality is very different.

We seem to live in a culture that expects the worst from our children. Parents assume that the terrible two’s
(when two-year-olds have endless temper tantrums) are an inevitability. But educationalist Patricia Knox has noted that these frustrated outbursts are often due to an active, inquisitive two-year-old being confined to the house with little to do and no other children to interact with and a parent who is busy with other chores.

There’s also a common misconception that if you don’t hit a child it will cause chaos. But Claire Rayner said in an episode of the BBC programme
Question
Time
that she had never hit her children as she recognised this to be a form of bullying – yet her children always knew right from wrong and were very well behaved. (This author’s interview with Claire Rayner appears later in this book.) Educational writer and psychologist Penelope Leach said the same thing at a Children Are Unbeatable seminar held in London in January 2002. She was never hit as a child so had never hit her own offspring.

Psychologist and writer Dorothy Rowe, speaking at the same seminar, said that her friends had brought their children up without hitting them. These children had grown into the most confident, caring and hardworking adults that she knew and had a strong sense of who they were.

Contrast that with the numerous troubled abusive adults and abused children detailed in this book, and it’s easy to see that violence doesn’t work.

School teachers can also add to this culture of negativity by suggesting that pupils are becoming more disruptive than in previous years. In truth, children
with problems are sometimes expelled nowadays whereas they’d have previously been seen – and hopefully helped – by a child psychologist.

America is equally guilty of misrepresenting its young as Mike Males, author of
Framing
Youth
pointed out in an informative internet article called
Why
Demonize
A
Healthy
Teen
Culture?
He stated that ‘Ignoring clear statistics and research, authorities seem to lie in wait for suburban youth killings, months and thousands of miles apart, to validate a false hypothesis of generational disease, even as they ignore the more compelling evidence of deteriorating adult behaviour.’ He notes that adults killing kids is far more common than kids killing kids. Other American writers have also remarked on this trend, pointing out that four-million American children are seriously hurt by their parents every year.